


and i knew its name

by hedwag



Series: be still, you are unbreaking [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Ace Lives, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, POV Multiple, Protective Mugiwara no Ichimi | Straw Hat Pirates, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Slow Burn, don't copy this work to another site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2020-10-13 11:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20581646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedwag/pseuds/hedwag
Summary: She should be dead.She knows it, but with the gentle warmth of her mother’s chest underneath her cheek and the soft snores of her long-nosed brother brushing the skin of her neck, she knows that she would die again before she lets anything tear this apart.





	1. Chapter 1

She should be dead. She knows it.

She knows it like she knows what it feels like to have someone twist your arm so harshly behind your back, something snaps. She knows it like she knows what it feels like to have the person you love most gasp out an ‘I love you’ before their blood cakes the creases of your skin. She knows it like she knows what it feels like to have water burn down your throat as you fight for air. She knows it like she knows that after death, there is nothing but black and it is suffocating.

She _knows _it, but with the gentle warmth of her mother’s chest underneath her cheek and the soft snores of her long-nosed brother brushing the skin of her neck, she knows that she would die again before she let anything tear this apart.

She only remembers bits and pieces of her previous life, like gentle kisses, soft hugs and whispers of names brushing against her ears. She has had a long enough time, nearly seven years, to reflect on those bits and pieces.

She tries very hard to be a normal child for her small family, but she knows she failed when her mother comes into their room at night and just hovers over her while she ‘sleeps’ waiting for the screams to start at any minute. She knows she failed when her brother always manages to sneak her extra candied cinnamon nuts their mother makes just to see her smile.

It is hard because she recognizes their long, pointed noses and knows this story isn’t a happy one. Knows that she is once again going to have the blood of a loved one cake the creases of her skin. Knows there is a ticking clock above her mother’s head and she is going to be helpless all over again.

Her mother makes a soft noise when her hands clench the shirt underneath her cheek tightly. The hand resting on her back begn to pet her softly in comfort and the girl wants to savor this moment forever.

“Baby, are you awake?” Her mother’s whisper is soft against the hair on her scalp and makes tears flood her eyes. Thankful her mother can’t see her face, the girl makes appropriate snuffling sleep noises and snuggles deeper.

As her mother’s soft giggle tickles her ears and her brother’s face burrows deeper into her neck, the girl makes a decision.

Usopp’s first memory of his sister is her tiny hands clutching him close as he cried. He can’t even remember the reason for his tears but he remembers, would always remember, the warmth of her breath against his hair and the way she clutched him to her like she was the one thing in the world holding him together. He remembers her wild, dark hair brushing against his nose and the smell of cinnamon that clung to her from the treats their mother made them.

They had been huddled together underneath a blanket in the room they shared and he remembers thinking that his sister would protect him from anything outside their little blanket world.

He watches her now as she runs oils through her hair, something their mother...used to do, with tears streaming down her face, her gaze seeing something beyond her reflection in the mirror. She has on a dark dress that only makes her darker skin seem almost sallow. The oils she is putting in her hair make the coarse coils gleam and hang down her back neatly as she takes out the braids she had for the...ceremony.

“Pirates are coming.” He didn’t know why the words leave him the way they do, breathless and almost lost in the air. Her hands pause in her hair before they drop with a thud on the vanity. Their mother’s vanity. The one their father gave her. The father that wasn’t...there.

He watches those hands, the ones that once held him together, grab a handkerchief off the vanity and dab the tears off her face. He watches the way her eyes shutter close for a brief moment then open. He watches as her gaze clear, as if she was returning to herself. He watches and watches and watches as his sister visibly build herself back together and stand.

Their matching dark gazes meet and she smiles at him with her gleaming, loose coarse hair, her dark dress, and fingers still clenched tightly around that handkerchief.

“Of course.” The words are scratchy from her crying but that didn’t deter from the sheer...something that pours out of his sister that almost make his knees buckle from underneath him. He fights to hold her gaze, some animal instinct inside of him making him want to sprint to the nearest exit and _run_.

“Because...we’re going to _become_ pirates.”

She stares down at the water, watching the waves break apart into foam that tickle the tops of her feet. The cool temperature of the water ground her and her tangled curls brush across her face, catching on her eyelashes and mouth.

She can hear her brother fumbling around his defenses on top of the hill and his crew tripping over rocks and sticks.

She sucks in a deep breath and closes her eyes. Their village is a small one and the air is always crisp with salt from the waters that surrounded them. Waves can be heard from anywhere on the island but here, it feels like it is thundering in her ears drowning out all other distractions. The white noise allows her to retreat further in her head until she enters a light kind of meditation that allows her to simply _feel_.

In this state, she can almost taste the anticipation in the air. The sound of a boat near their dock only confirms it.

Zoro watches the trembling liar lie, amused, when Luffy’s attention and gaze snaps towards their right. It’s only then that Zoro realizes they’re being watched by something other than the liar’s ‘crew’. Judging from Nami’s suddenly tensed form, she notices too.

Zoro turns and meets the eyes of a girl who doesn’t bother trying to hide her staring. She is standing further down the shore, in a pair of torn up jeans that were rolled up and soaked from the waves crashing near her bare feet. A cropped shirt hands on her frame, baggy enough that it slips off one of her shoulders. Her hair is tousled and curls around her face, swinging to and fro around her shoulders from the force of the sea breeze. She is strangely...untouchable, as if she is going to sink into the waves to never be seen again.

“Who’s that?” Luffy asks, cutting off the liar mid-lie. Luffy’s eyes hasn’t wavered from her form since he noticed her and the girl just stares right back, eyes dark and intent like she was seeing something beyond their flesh and bones.

The liar, trembling still, turns to see what has grabbed their attention and something...weird...flashes across his face.

The trembling stops.

Zoro can’t help but tense as the girl makes her way towards them.

“That’s my….” There is a hesitation there, as if he is trying to come up with something, presumably a lie. The silence that followed his hesitation is enough time for the girl to cover the distance between them. She stops about a foot away from Luffy, who just _stare__s_.

She reaches up and Zoro reaches down, only for her to brush her tangled hair away from her face completely. There’s a chiming, not unlike bells, and Zoro notices that she has small braids with glass beads interwoven through her hair that chime as they brush against one another. The noise breaks the quiet and her eyes laugh at their tense forms.

“T-That’s my sister.”

Luffy watches her tug Usopp’s bandanna down over his eyes, dodging her brother’s swatting hands with twinkling eyes.

Luffy watches her watch him when he reveals he knows her father, gaze not twinged with happiness like Usopp’s but...knowing.

Luffy couldn’t watch her from his position next to Usopp near the front of the group as they make their way into the village. He turns back to look and she’s slouched, gait languid like a cat, but her head tilted up at the sky looking as if she is cloud gazing. Her hair, that chimes like bells, curls around her shoulders and bounces as she walks.

Luffy briefly wonders if it is as soft as it looks. It’s different from Usopp’s hair which reminds Luffy of the clouds that promises sunny days. Her hair is curls that are tangled under their own, heavy weight, but they gleam with oils and her glass beads.

He wonders what her voice sounds like because she hasn’t spoken at all since he saw her standing on the beach like she was going to catch flight on the next sea breeze.

Like a bird waiting to take off.


	2. Chapter 2

Nami is trying to understand what it is about Usopp’s sister that makes it hard to ignore her.

Maybe ignore wasn’t the right word for it. It was as if she was something in the corner of your eye that kept your attention. Something dark and fluttery, like a shy hummingbird. Only when you manged to look at her head on, something about her made you want to...look away. Caught doing something you weren’t suppose to.

Nami thinks it’s funny that the town was clearly amused by Usopp’s antics but the way they treat his sister is...different.

They are stopped no less than five times on the way to eat because small children keep walking up to her to give her...beads?

It is always followed with a “neechan! neechan!” that sounds strangely like a song.

Each time she takes them, she places a kiss on each child’s forehead that makes the child flush with such happiness that Nami often had to glance away.

It explains the beads in her hair, Nami thought, but it doesn’t explain the number of times she has to turn away people in the town trying to _give_ her things. Anything from a baked good to flowers it was clear some kid their age had picked after seeing her walking down the main road.

“Usopp, what does your sister _do_?” Nami couldn’t help the question as they all wait for her to take a package from an elderly woman selling produce in the village. The elderly woman is mumbling softly enough that they can’t hear what is being said, but the girl is nodding along, beads chiming and eyes intent on the woman’s face.

“E-eh...” Usopp rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, eyes gleaming with..pride? “She’s always helping people out when they need it. It started mostly because of..” He makes a vague gesture towards himself that cause Zoro snort softly behind her.

“My...warnings used to scare the townspeople, but she never told me to stop.” Usopp’s voice gets a little quieter like he didn’t want to be overheard, “but she always made sure to reassure the people afterwards by doing things like helping with gardens, selling their produce for the day, things like that. Syrup really...loves her. Don’t say anything to her about it! It embarrasses her.”

Nami glances at the placid expression that girl wore and honestly couldn’t imagine her being embarrassed at all. Turning away with a snort, she sees Luffy’s dark gaze on the girl now making her way back towards them.

With a shrug, she follows behind Usopp. It wasn’t like this was going to be her problem for long anyway.

She is starting to feel like all she ever did was wait. She had imagined so many difference scenarios about meeting the famous Strawhat Pirates, or at least the beginnings of their crews. She had imagined she would feel dozens of different emotions, but mostly she just feels tired. She forgot how flinty Nami is, or how _bored _Zoro seems.

She isn’t sure what to make of Luffy’s...staring. She heard Usopp’s whispering about her like she hears everything else that carries on the wind and wonders briefly if that caused some kind of reaction out of the future king. Even now, she feels like she could feel his eyes burning into the side of her face.

His stare is unwavering, like a predator who saw something interesting and was debating how to hunt it. For someone so childish, it is startling that he has such an intense gaze. With a snort, she knows the reason behind his staring. She knows what was going to be asked of her. After all, this is what she has been looking toward for since the first time her brother rasped those words to her.

Watching the sky above her, she _yearn__s_.

She is gazing absentmindedly at a cloud that reminds her of a cat when a shout draws her attention to the group she had follow to the mansion. Her brother is facing off with the...butler, while rest of them watch and it becames clear that the shout came from Kaya. Drawing closer, she is able to hear the last words the impostor says to her brother.

“You should tell one of your usual lies instead of admitting to being the son of a _filthy _pirate.” The words are sneered and ugly, and with them comes such a sharp rage that causes her to suck in a breath that she almost chokes on.

She watches her brother draw a fist back and _moves_.

“Oi.”

Zoro jumps, hand going to his blades as the girl suddenly appears beside Usopp. Her hand grips her brother’s wrist tightly, stopping the punch inches away from the butler’s face. Usopp fumbles awkwardly with his forward momentum, knocking into his sister who doesn’t move an inch.

After trading a look with Nami who looks just as startled, Zoro glances at Luffy who just looks..._hungry_. He’s leaning forward like he only just stopped himself from leaping after the girl. Zoro rips his gaze away his captain’s face and almost wish he hadn’t.

“That’s enough of that.” The butler flinch, like the words are a punch themselves. The words are rasped and husky, with a strange lilt that Zoro has never heard in all of his travels in the East Blue. It is only then that Zoro realizes that this is the first time she has spoken at all.

That all had nothing to do with the stare that she levels at the butler. It’s dark and keen, like she is observing something that she wants to squash beneath her bare feet.

“You should watch how you speak about pirates, _Klahadore_.” The way she says his name made it clear that she’s laughing at him, even though the blank expression on her face never changes. Turning her back completely on the butler, she lets go of her brother’s wrist and reaches up to tug the bandanna down over his eyes.

“Don’t shame yourself by stooping to his level, otouto.” She dodges hands swatting at her with ease, and looks toward the blonde watching with tears in her eyes.

“Sh-” Whatever Kaya is going to say was stopped when the girl shakes her head.

“Kaya, I think we’ll be going now.” Zora watches as she wraps an arm around her brother and start to leave. The butler speaks, clearly scrambling to have the last word.

“Don’t come back here.” The words are just as harsh as the others that have been said but the girl doesn’t flinch. Only waves back mockingly, steps never faltering, as she ducks down to whisper to her brother.

“D-did you see her move?” Nami whispers harshly to him as the entire group move away from the mansion. “She was at least ten feet away. How did she get there so fast?”

Zoro watches those beads shine in the sunlight as they disappear beyond the hill and wonders.

She knew overhearing Kuro and his crew was inevitable but it didn’t make it any less horrifying. She is once again reminded of how unfair this world is, even to the nicest of them all. To call her and her brother filthy when you are going to murder a sad and lonely young girl for money is laughable.

She watches this man, with his slick smile and gleaming glasses and wants to scream. With a sigh, she looks at her brother and sees the moment when the name Kuro registers. The blank fear that crosses his face makes her want to tug him to her immediately. But she doesn’t.

“K-K-Kuro?!” The whisper is loud enough to garner the attention of the pair that they’re all watching if she hadn’t covered his mouth in time. His startled eyes meets her own gaze and she stares back.

“Who?” Luffy’s bored voice interrupts them and, in unison, the pair turn and look at him.

She pulls her hand away from Usopp’s mouth and listens to Usopp stammer his way into an explanation. She can see the words aren’t really registering enough to stop Luffy from doing what he does best.

“Hey!” He shoots up from their hiding spot and Usopp’s panicked shout has her heaving a giant sigh. Closing her eyes, she stays huddled in the bush and waits.

Usopp watches Luffy fall and fears.

“And what about the other one?” The question is harsh and Usopp looks up and sees the pure disdain in Kla-Kuro’s face and fears.

“No one will believe him, we have nothing to fear from _him_.” The way he says it made the hairs on the back of Usopp’s arm stand. He can’t help the glance he gives the bush and the pirates don’t miss it.

“...and the girl?” The question is sly and Usopp fears. There’s a strange pause after the question that causes both of them to stare at Kuro. Kuro’s gaze rests on the bush, blank and sightless.

“...Captain?”

“_Don’t_ call me that!” Kuro snaps out before turning his back on them all and walking away, leaving the question unanswered.

Usopp takes the opportunity and _runs_.

“_**PIRATES ARE COMING!!**_”

She stands up from the bush and glances around, her eyes trailing over to the direction Kuro went with Jango. She thinks she can still see the black of his suit from where she was standing and grinds her teeth.

A breeze brushes through her hair and she closes her eyes with a heavy sigh. Her gaze drifts toward the cliffs edge. Slouching, she makes her way down the cliffs.

She keeps going until she stops next to a sleeping boy with a strawhat. She watches his peaceful expression with envy only lifting her gaze from his face when she hears steps tumbling down towards them.

She meets the gaze of Zoro who questions her almost immediately.

“What happened?” She blinks back at him. They all stare at each other awkwardly and she’s amused by the red flush of anger that floods Nami’s face. The moment it looks like she might explode, mouth opening to no doubt scream, she speaks.

“Klahadore is the pirate known as Kuro.” She says the words quietly, knowing they’ll hear them traveling through the wind. “He plans to force Kaya to write a will that leave all of her fortune to him before he murders her.”

She notices the way the kids flinch when she says ‘murder’ and she immediately reaches out to run a soothing hand through their hairs. They all huddle in close to her, clinging to her pants and loose shirt.

“Hey, hey,” She allows them to cling briefly before she pulls away and squats down in front of them. “You guys should make your way home, alright? Everything is going to be fine.”

The kids nod back shakily.

“You’ll be okay, neechan?”

With a soft smile, she ruffles their hair and nudges them toward the hill. She watches them as they go up before turning back toward the still sleeping boy.

She feels Nami and Zoro gape at her while she nudges her toes into Luffy’s side harshly, trying to get this show on the road. Luffy shoots up and glances around, confused. He sees all of them standing around and a bemused grin breaks across his face.

“What I miss?”

Nami and Zoro understandably explode in typical fashion and she tries to listen to their explanation which should amuse her but there’s a sound that carries in the wind that causes her attention to snap toward the direction of the mansion. Dread filling her pores, despite knowing this is going to be okay, that this needs to happen, she cuts across the conversation.

“We need to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i went back and changed the entire tense of the fic to present simply because.............for what i'm envisioning for this fic, that tense is a lot better for me tbh. ANYWAY lololololol i'm trying to be mysterious as i add more information about the SIOC bc i love to keep people guessing and there is actually a lot of deliberate kind of language going on here. so the fact that we still don't know her name???
> 
> also listen we're not here to hash out the entire plot of one piece because whew chile no. BUT who doesn't love a good origin couple of chapters, amiright?
> 
> also there is going to be a pairing.......................................and that's all i'm going to say about that.


	3. Chapter 3

She watches dawn break from the top of the hill, the noises of preparation all around her, and uses the warmth of the sun to calm her nerves.

She can’t help recalling the faint bruise on Usopp’s cheek when they all caught sight of him as they neared the village. Can’t help recalling the blood dripping down Usopp’s arm and the way he tried to hide his pain from her. Can’t help recalling the look on his face when he said that no one believed him. Wanting to shout that she always believes him, always believed in him.

With a shake of her head, she turns away from the sunrise and starts walking back to help the others.

After all, it doesn’t matter if they believe him now or later. They’ll be leaving soon enough.

The sun is beaming down on them as they wait atop an oil slick hill and that girl is staring up at the clouds again, hair chiming and blowing in a breeze, laying down as if they were partaking in an afternoon picnic, not waiting for an invasion of her home.

Nami is frustrated and hot, and watching this girl lazily play with a butterfly irritates her. She’s acting like this doesn’t matter when her _home_ is threatened by a bunch of no-good pirates who only care about themselves.

“Aren’t you worried at all?” Nami snaps out and regrets it when that dark, dark gaze lands on her. Her brows are furrowed and it’s the most clear expression of emotion Nami has seen from her without there being children around. Her eyes glide over her face so intently that Nami has to ignore her instinct to look away, stammering awkwardly.

“I-I just mean-”

“I know what you meant.” Nami, in her frozen state, can’t help but notice the strange lilt to her words that no one else on the island has but as strange as it is, it’s not unpleasant. Long drawn out vowels that make it husky and raspy, like the steam that touches your face when you have a hot drink on a cold day.

The warmth of her voice does nothing for her dark gaze.

The girl looks away from her, face falling into what Nami is beginning to believe is just her default expression, and Nami doesn’t even kid herself into thinking she doesn’t feel like she was stared down by the eye of a hurricane.

A breeze picks up.

The girl sits up and looks towards Usopp, who’s already staring back at her, eyes wide with something Nami missed.

“We’re on the wrong side of the coast.” The two say in unison, one filled with fear and the other resigned. Usopp immediately runs off, shouting over his shoulder.

“It’s only three minutes away. We have to go!”

The girl stands, brushing dirt from her ratty, rolled up jeans. Her hands find their way into her hair and she begins to braid its mass into a braid that clings to her scalp, intertwining the already braided parts of her hair into it, removing beads as they are folded into the braid.

Luffy, after hesitating for a brief moment with his eyes lingering on the girl, rushes after Usopp. The other three watch him sprint off when Nami suddenly remembers their boat filled with her _freedom_ and panics.

“Our boat!” She screams at Zoro as she rushes to climb the hill and begins to slip. Zoro tries to dodge her swinging hands but she grasps his shirt tightly and lifts herself up onto the hill and runs.

Hands falling from her hair and pocketing her beads, she watches Nami run and turns back to see Zoro cursing as he slips down the slick hill.

“I’m gonna kill that _witch_.” He’s snarling out and she can’t help the laughter that leaves her, watching this mossy haired boy slip and slide. His head jerks up at the sound and his scowling face freezes once he realizes that she’s still there, watching him and laughing. She turns away, trying to smother her laugh but chances another look at him.

He’s stuck in the most ridiculous pose, trying to keep his balance, and she laughs again, bringing up a hand to cover her mouth as if to smother the laugh before it reaches the air.

“_Aren’t you worried at all?’ _

Her laughter peters out at the reminder and she sucks in a deep breath, wiping stray tears away. She can’t stop the grin the blooms across her face and she looks at Zoro, who is watching her with the most peculiar expression on his face.

“Maa...I guess we should go now, huh?” She mutters, waving an absent hand in his direction. Zoro’s shriek as he’s propelled toward her makes her laugh all over again. She catches him by the back of his shirt as he flies past her and he nearly chokes on his collar. She smiles down at him and he scowls at her, to her amusement.

“Let’s go help my otouto.”

He yanks himself from her grip with a snarl and starts toward the direction of the village, the opposite direction they need to go. She watches him go, bemused and wondering if she should say something but shrugs. Slouching, she makes her way towards the other coastline. The sound of Nami’s yelling hits her before she actually sees their makeshift group fighting the pirates.

“We can’t sit around and wait for Luffy and Zoro! You need to fight them back! I’ll be right behind you.” Nami is gripping at her trembling brother and she bites back a snarl at the sight of his shaking knees. Coming up behind them, she rests a hand on Nami’s shoulder and the girl jumps. Making eye-contact with her brother, whose eyes plead to her, she smiles.

“You’ve done well, otouto.” She says before she looks out at the men who are trying to hurt what was _hers_. She grins at them with nothing but teeth.

“Now, let’s take care of the trash together.”

She pulls out the beads she’d pocketed earlier and lets them spin between her fingers while making direct eye-contact with Jango.

There’s a silence where the pirates are staring up at her, suddenly realizing what she is capable of, and she grins down at them. Usopp straightens up behind her, the sound of his slingshot pulling taunt fills the air as he aims down at them with none of his previous fear, and she feels her grin get impossibly wider.

The beads spin faster and faster between her fingers until they stop. The breeze stops. Everything on the island stops then _moves_.

The beads shoot forwards too quickly for the eye to catch and they hit the foreheads of the pirates nearest them with such force that they all fall back as if shot. Shouts go up all around them as the pirates watch their comrades fall with trepidation.

She can’t help the laugh that tumbles out of her as she claps her hands together with murmur.

“_Gale Palm_.”

A gale of wind pushes from her hands and blows the pirates back with ease. Blood roaring louder than the wind rushing past her ears, she jumps down to meet the rest of the forces with a laugh and her brother’s ammunition flying through the air.

Luffy sees Nami standing on the top of the hill with a weird look on her face before they can hear anything.

“Witch!” Zoro snarls out making Luffy laugh. Nami doesn’t turn, just stares the hill where they hear shouting and laughter. Stopping beside her, they look and Luffy is hit with a wave of giddiness that makes him want to laugh and laugh.

Usopp’s sister is almost...dancing as she makes large sweeps with her hands, _**blowing**_the pirates back like she’s swatting flies. Luffy watches as she sucks in a deep breath and exhales a gust of wind that knocks some of them back into the water.

Usopp is at her back, grinning and Luffy is struck by the fact that they have the same smile, same grin and it’s the first time that she has ever _really _smiled. A smile that was full of fun and laughter, a smile that reminds Luffy of gap-toothed smiles and freckled cheeks.

Cheeks stretched so thin it’s nearly painful, Luffy jumps down to join them.

“Shishishishishishi!”

She’s gasping with nearly every breath but she can’t remember the last time she felt this alive. She chances a glance around them and all that’s left standing is just that idiot Jango’s japing at them with his ring in a tight grip. Luffy is still chuckling under his breath, his ‘shishishishishi’ making her giddy.

There’s an ache in her bones that feels good and she shares a grin with her brother, who is panting as hard as her without a single new mark on him. They’re still smiling at each other when arguing breaks out behind them from Nami, Zoro and Luffy. Usopp joins and she lets her gaze drift back up to the sky. Closing her eyes as a breeze comes from the sea to kiss her face, she lets the blood roaring in her ears drown out their silly argument.

A whisper brushes her ear, her eyes open, and she barely dodges a stretched fist, pulling Usopp down as she ducks.

Yanking them both back up, she trades a disbelieving look with Zoro and Luffy proceeds to absolute_ thrash_ the newly awakend pirates. They all gape as Luffybegins to rip their ship apart with his bare hands before Jango’s ring and voice forces him to sleep.

As panicked shouting rises, she feels hysterical laughter almost bubble out of her throat when the Nyaban brothers make their appearance. She watches, blankly, as Zoro engages them. Watches as Zoro struggles but knows she shouldn’t step in. Watches Nami and Usopp’s attempts to help him fail. Watches Jango bring his arm back to slash at a defenseless Nami’s side and she flicks her wrist.

“Oi.”

With a gust, Jango’s body flings into Nyaban’s brothers with a shout. Nami makes it to Zoro with his swords and she watches the pirates scramble out of the pile she’s put them in before there’s something like a pause that stills the air and it gets thick with fear.

The air around her picks up as she feels a stare burning into the back of her head. With gritted teeth, she turns and meets the gaze of the man who started all this nonsense.

“_**Kuro.**_”

The snarl rips through the air harshly enough that everyone freezes. There’s no breeze, not anymore, but somehow her braid is whipping in a wind no one else can feel. Even him, trembling from his position behind his sister, watching this horrible man glare down at her.

His sister’s face has lost all the joy from their earlier fighting, instead her face is marred with a scowl and furrowed brows.

“It’s dawn...and you’re all here.” The words aren’t shouted but they make Usopp duck down behind his sister nonetheless.

“You’ve all been thwarted by mere_ children_?” The words are hissed between his teeth and the stammering of the pirates ring out around them. They start to defend themselves against his harsh words and Usopp can’t even pretend to pay attention to them.

Usopp keeps his eyes on the back of his tense sister. Her body is frozen, tensed, and he can see the tips of her fingers are vanishing. He reaches out to grab her still tangible wrist and she angles herself to see him out the corner of her eye. Whatever she sees on his face causes her expression to clear away, leaving the placid, lazy expression he was used to.

He tries to smile at her, really he does, but he knows the trembling of his hand gives him away. The corners of her eyes tighten before smoothing out and her gaze goes back to the man who is attacking his own crew.

_And he called us filthy?_ Usopp watches this man pose his claws at the throat of the men who were helping him.

“You have five minutes or I will kill everyone.” His eyes dart to his sister briefly enough to make Usopp twitch. His sister doesn’t tense but moves so she’s blocking him and Nami from view. The brothers are renewed with strength and they attack Zoro immediately. The sounds of their fighting are so loud that Usopp almost doesn’t hear his sister.

“Nami, wake him up.” She says, not taking her eyes off the other pirates.

“Right.” Nami darts away and Jango sees her almost immediately. His ring flies through the air and Usopp’s hand is no longer gripping flesh.

Luffy comes awake to sharp pain. Shooting up, he aims his glare at Nami who’s the only person in front of him.

“Was that you, Nami?! How dare you step on my face-” Luffy feels something soft brush against his back and stops. He looks over his shoulder...and then has to look up

Usopp’s sister is there, hovering, nearly back to back with him, and she’s holding the blade ring between two hands. It’s caught in a swirling mass of air but the blade...the ring is a few inches into her chest. He hears Nami’s harsh gasp and Usopp makes a loud pained noise.

An ugly laugh fills the air.

As the noise her brother makes reach her ears, there’s a moment where she can honestly appreciate the drama of the entire scene as she stares down at the ring that’s embedded a few inches into her chest.

Villain maniacal laughter aside, she thinks.

She feels Luffy at her back and almost wishes she could let the scene play out the way it was supposed to. Luffy with blood coming out of the back of his head, otherwise unharmed. It’s just...she never liked the sight of blood. And after all, she did make a decision so long ago.

With a sigh, she pulls the ring out and lets it drop to the ground with a soft thud that silences the laughter. Her flesh comes back, instead of just air, and she fingers the hole in her shirt with a vague sense of disappointment as she drops down to the ground. She brings her gaze to Kuro, who’s staring at her like she’s a devil like the fruit she’d eaten.

Nothing could stop the grin on her face.

“Maa, I believe there’s still about three minutes left of that time limit.” The pirates twitch violently and she rolls her shoulders, glancing at Kuro.

“But honestly, I think it’s about time you left this village.” She says. Kuro attempts to hold her attention by saying something in reply, but her attention is on Kaya who comes to a stop behind him.

Usopp sputters and as they speak, both them and Kuro, she spots the straightened back on the girl.

“I’ll give you all my fortune. Just...just leave this town alone.” Kaya pleads. She cuts her eyes to Kuro, whose greedy gaze never wavers. Just grows.

“I don’t want just the money. I want peace.” Kuro starts to explain but she can’t hear the rest over the anger she feels. He dares to talk about his wants and needs? His desires? When he’s caused this chaos?

“You want peace and this is what you do?” Fully aware that she’s cut him off in the middle of his sob story, her arm swings out, gesturing around them. “You would kill an innocent girl for the sake of your peace?” She spits out, ignoring the whispers, the warnings in the wind.

He gets an ugly look on his face.

“What could a strange thing like you know about peace, little **Ushio**?” The words are as ugly as he is and they suspend, hanging between them all like a noose.

She’s been patient….always tired, always waiting. Listening to the words that travel, the whispers that brush her ears. Knows what she has to do, knows what is to come. But…

The sound of her name falling from his mouth is all it takes.

She’s air and she’s there in his face. He tries to draw away but she’s quicker. She grips his face in one hand, pulls him close, and sucks in a breath. He chokes and keeps choking. She watches his face turn a dark red, nearly purple with satisfaction and she draws him closer, nearly nose to nose, to watch his eyes roll.

“_Shio!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone for the overwhelming positive response to the first couple of chapters. really, i am so incredibly thankful. i will be replying individually in a moment, but omg thank you guys so very much for allowing me to explore this type of story telling.
> 
> also we HAVE A NAME. if anyone is curious, her names uses the kanji for "tide (like a sea tide) is blown" but lol what if it was just salt because shes so salty. anywho the story telling is going to probably stay mostly in Ushio's point of view from this point on, unless the situation calls for something different. let me tell yall something, not using her name was a struggle. 
> 
> I got asked if she hears the Voice of All Things and *eyes emoji*
> 
> BUT SHE HAS EATEN A DEVIL'S FRUIT. And I'm totally drawing inspiration from Naruto, BnHa and ATLA in regards to how she uses it to so please don't sue me. 
> 
> also please excuse my excessive breaks, i just.........need PAUSES AND SWITCHES OKAY. 
> 
> lol yall ushio is Tired™


	4. Chapter 4

She does not remember the exact moment she gained consciousness in this world. She was dying, with salt water burning her throat, and then nothing. There was nothing for a very long time. She remembers an all-consuming blackness that seemed to go on for ages until...there was sudden warmth beside her. She was stuck in this blackness, this darkness, but she was warm.

It wasn’t until she came out kicking and screaming that she realized that warmth was her brother.

Usopp clung to her even as small babies, when all she ever did was scream out her grief, her anger. Usopp would snuggle so hard into her that his nose always poked her neck and face harshly, like he was reminding her that he was there. That he had always been there. That he would always be here.

“_Shio!_”

Startled, she exhales. Kuro draws in a desperate breath, eyes rolling into the back of his head as he passes out. He hangs there, suspended in her clawed grip, and she realizes that she’s hovering in the stage between half air and not, holding his body with sheer wind pressure. She drops him without remorse and swerves to look at her brother while landing on the ground with a thud.

Usopp is staring at her, glaring more like. His shoulders are hunched up almost to his ears and his brows furrowed. Everything is still and she feels the stares of everyone else boring into her from all directions.

She can’t remember the last time she...lost control like that. Not since she first ate the fruit, where she didn’t know the difference between the wind and herself. Where she was still full of pure spite and anger. Where she spent _days_ lost in the wind. Only able to come back to herself when she heard Usopp’s pained crying in the whispers.

She breaks the stare and chances a glance around her. The Kuro pirates are all frozen, staring at her with fear and trepidation that fills her with only slight regret. She sneers at them, feeling pure exhaustion rushing into every one of her cracks.

“Leave this place,” She snarls between gritted teeth, frustrated and so, so tired. “and never come back.”

They all stare at each for too long before they actually move. They start towards their fallen captain but pause once they realize they have to walk past her to do so. Rolling her eyes, she steps to the side, allowing them to gather the poor excuse of a captain, and walks towards her brother. The pirates she passes flinch as she walks and she slouches, slowing her stride. Nearly hunched over and tucking her hands into her pockets, she allows her face to relax completely as she nears her brother and Kaya.

“Maa...that was quite-” She’s cut off by a spray of water hitting her face. She blinks and Usopp is there with a...spray bottle?

“Bad Shio!” He shouts before he sprays her again. She stares, unblinkingly, and Usopp keeps glaring.

“What did we say about doing that..” He makes a violent arm swinging motion with the spray bottle in hand that makes her smother a laugh, “thing with the air?”

“Thing?” She tilts her head to the side to paint the perfect picture of innocence.

“You know what I’m talking about!” Usopp nearly screams causing her to wince. He begins to rant and she glances off at the pirates who are still chancing glances back at their group as they run with their tails between their legs.

“I’m not going to apologize for protecting this place by any means necessary, Usopp.” The use of his name makes him pause and she can feel his stare boring into the side of her face. She looks at him, gesturing to all around them. This island that was her new beginning, their home, their solace.

“I will do everything in my power to protect the ones I love and...I love everyone on this island.” She declares, unafraid.

“I love the air that comes from the sea on the west coast, because the salt is so strong you can taste it on your tongue. I love the trees, the flowers, the blades of grass and every grain of sand. Hell, I even love the obasan who trips you when you go yelling in the morning because this is our home and I would rip this whole damn world apart if it meant keeping everyone and everything I love safe!”

She’s nearly yelling by the end, back straight with her hands out and clenched at her sides. They stare at each other for a moment before Usopp sighs, arms dropping to his sides. He moves in close and pulls her into a hug that startles a gasp out of her. His long, long nose buries itself into her neck and she has to blink back tears.

“Just...Just don’t lose yourself.” He mumbles into her neck so only she can hear. She buries her smile into his cheek, hands moving to clench his shirt between her fingers.

“Neechan!!”

“Captain!!”

Three bodies slamming into them causes them to fall into the ground with a harsh thud.

“Oi!”

“Otouto, don’t yell.” There are tears all over her ruined shirt and she’s trying to wrap her arms around all the little bodies who are clutching onto any piece of clothing they can. She’s pulling them to her chest when another body joins the pile.

“I’m so glad everyone is okay!” Kaya wails, throwing her arms around Usopp. Ushio has the pleasure of seeing her brother’s face turn completely red and it startles a genuine laugh out of her. They all turn to her and she can’t stop the laughter or the tears, feeling as light as the air around them.

Feeling as if she is actually beginning again, instead of being remade.

It only takes a moment before everyone’s laughter joins hers in the wind.

With giggling carrying across a gentle breeze, she watches the children of the village look for the small beads in the grass and sands of the coast. Little fingers tug at her hair, braiding random braids while huffing little breaths caress her face. She smiles at the look of utmost concentration of the little one in her lap, his tongue sticking out of his mouth adorably.

She closes her eyes with a soft inhale. There is a breeze circling around, carrying all the sounds from the coast around her. The laughter, the chiming of the beads in their hands, and the swaying grass around them. The whispers.

She exhales, opening her eyes and he is there, peering down at her with his face shadowed by his straw hat. They stare at each other long enough for the little one in her lap to finish his braids. Together they watch as he tumbles out of her lap in his haste to help the others finds the rest of the beads.

His giggles joins the others and she flops back and sprawls out, hair mixing with the grass, and takes the opportunity to cloud gaze. Luffy takes a seat down next to her, hat hanging down his back. She ignores his staring until she sees his hand reaching out towards her out the corner of her eye.

Watching him, she sees and feels his hand softly tug on one of the braids closest to him. She has the pleasure of watching the most curious sort of smile break out across his face before she once again has fingers tugging on her hair as he clumsily tries to copy the other braids in her hair.

A strange sort of peace settles between the two of them, as Luffy braids her hair and she watches him do so. It’s quiet, despite the laughter, crashing waves, and whispers. Quiet enough that her eyes close and she finds herself drifting into a light doze.

“Join my crew.” The words are certain and heavy. The weight of them hovers in the air and she opens her eyes to find his face hovering right above hers, that curious smile still lingering on his face. His fingers are still in her hair and he’s nearly on top of her with only inches between their faces. She questions why she didn’t feel him get that close to her and realizes that she can’t _hear_ anything.

She can feel the way her eyes get big and she watches that curious smile break into a full fledged grin.

“Eh, where’s Ushio? Staying behind?” Zoro’s question came as they were setting up to sail away from Syrup and Nami hadn’t seen Ushio since after she...ran the pirates away. The brief shiver ran down Nami’s spine at the memory of Kuro struggling to breathe, red faced and _clawing_.

Luffy looks at them over his shoulder from atop the ram’s head, eyes intent.

“Can you blame her?” Nami mumbles, as she tries to ignore the fact that she’s mentally calculate how much some of the stuff given to them is worth. She also ignores the pit of guilt that follows these calculations.

Usopp drops his bag on the deck with a thud that draws her gaze and she watches him tilt his head up towards the sky. A breeze cards through his loose hair as his eyes close and he smiles wide, teeth beaming in the sun. It almost looks like he’s…waiting.

“Did you hear me-”

Their sails whipping open and the clinking of her beads are the only things that announce Ushio before she’s suddenly there beside her brother, bag landing with a thud. She stares at them all, eyes hooded with amusement.

“Took you long enough.” Usopp snickers, throwing an arm around her that pulls her into his chest roughly. She doesn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around her brother.

“I had to say goodbye.” Her words are muffled but they make Nami’s heartache in a way that makes her turn away immediately.

“Shishishishishi!” Luffy’s chucking fills the air as he wraps his arms around the pair of twins, crashing them together. Their yelps and Luffy’s laughter fill the air and Nami rolls her eyes.

The smell of delicious food fills the air as she follows the group into the restaurant on the sea. The place is crowded with soft music filling the air, couples sharing loving gazes, and the wait staff darting between tables. She can catch glimpses of outside through the small port windows but the space is almost entirely enclosed.

She takes it all in as they’re seated almost immediately after they enter and sighs. It’s too..._quiet_.

“What’s wrong?” Usopp loudly whispers, enough that the entire table hears him. Zoro and Nami stare at her over their menus and she stares back.

“...It’s nothing. The food is kind of pricey is all.” She mumbles out, using the menu to hide behind. Luffy’s stomping announces his annoyed presence.

“Hey! How come you guys are eating while I’m...” The rest of the words are lost as Ushio tries to ignore the itching under her skin in this restaurant boat with closed doors and windows and no open sky above her, no breeze to-

A soft hand brushing against the shoulder peaking out from her loose shirt startles her. Eyes darting up, she notices the curly-brow first. It’s cute, she thinks, watching his bright hair sway as he leans in close. He’s taller than she expected, for some reason, with his suit only making him seem even taller. His visible eye is smiling at her and she watches his mouth open with anticipation.

“Would the beautiful lady care for me to open the window?” He makes a gesture towards the curtains behind her. Ushio blinks and he’s there, opening the curtains. A large window was hidden there and he unlatches it and the most wonderful kind of breeze pours through.

It brushes her face like a kiss and she smiles when she can hear the barest whispers brushing against her ears again. A sharp gasp breaks her through her delight and she realizes that she’s closed her eyes. Her eyes open and Sanji is there, hand clutching his chest dramatically.

“I-I cannot believe that lady has decided to grace me with such a beautiful smile.” He pirouttes beautifully back to her and she allows him to take her hand. He brushes the back of her hand with the sofest hint of a kiss and she feels her smile become indulgent.

“Bless me with your name?” He breathes across the back of her hand and she listens carefully. She reaches out and brushes her hands through the bangs that hang over his eye. She feels him tense up andslowly pulls her hand away from him. His head tilts back up to look at her and she lets the smile on her face drop. They stare at each other for a brief moment before she’s blinking down at his immobile body.

Is...he breathing?

“O-oi! Get away from my sister! Zoro, get him!”

“Huh? Ushio can take care of herself.”

“Join my crew!”

She’s listening to Krieg reveal his master plan when the air quiets. Fist clench, her attentions darts to the sea where she can see Kreig’s galleon rocking on the sea. The boat sway to and fro and she turns her attention to the men about to attack them.

“Oi.” She cuts across Krieg’s rant bluntly and they all turn their attention to her. She points at their galleon and they all get to watch as the ship breaks apart, split down the middle. Screaming erupts as the ship sinks and she chances a glance at Zoro’s face.

It’s frozen in shock, teeth gritted with eyebrows drawn down and furrowed. His body is frozen and tense but he’s leaning forward, as if eager.

“Going Merry!” Usopp’s panicked shocked draw her attention back to the situation at hand, and she follows them as they make they make their way towards where they last left their ship. She doesn’t rush down there, instead she takes her time, attention still on the horizon where she can make out the barest hint of a small boat, and she only catches the tail-end of Johnny and Yosaku’s retelling of Nami tricking them. She carefully doesn’t look at Usopp and Zoro’s face, knowing that the grief and betrayal that mar their faces would make her do something she’d regret.

She always understood where Nami was coming from, understands it even. Understands the ruthlessness of protecting everything you love with everything you have, regardless of who stands in the way.

Doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt.

“No good is going to come chasing after her-”

A shoulder brushes against hers and it draws her attention from her thoughts. It’s Luffy and he makes a deliberate kind of eye-contact with her. There’s a strange quiet that always follows when she makes eye-contact with her captain and he turns away.

“Follow her.” His words cut Zoro off and she can tell it startles the rest of them. Usopp’s gaze is darting between her and Luffy while Zoro huffs out an amused sigh. She brushes against Luffy as she moves to start making her way back towards the Baratie.

“H-He’s come back to kill us all!” The shout draws everyone’s attention and they all rush past her to make out the small boat that’s much closer than before. The man sitting on the boat is tall, long legs crossed and relaxed in a way that makes it seem as if he’s bored. As if he didn’t just split a galleon in half.

“That’s ‘Hawk-Eyes’ Mihawk, the man I need to defeat.”

She’s slow behind them, not rushing, never rushing, and she’s far enough to see everything, see exactly how this is going to happen as if she’s back in her living room so long ago and watching everything through a screen. Her eyes dart from Mihawk to Zoro; Her nakama, one of _hers_, and she sees his face. The strange mixture of eagerness and trepidation. The way his eyes dance and the way his body is tense with barely contained energy.

“You have no idea how big the world really is.”

Ever so slow, she gets closer and the wind carries the sound of swords and words that make her ears ring. She hears his panic, she hears fear...she hears his pride.

She wraps her wind around herself in the next step she takes and makes her presences as small as possible. She drags a hand through her tangles curls, fingers catching on her braids and beads, and breathes in deep. The air in her lungs expands out and out until she seeps into the next breeze.

Or she tries to.

A hand swipes through her vanishing arm and she looks. Luffy, arm outstretched from his attempt to catch her vanishing form, is staring at the scene in front of them. He doesn’t even glance at her as his arm comes back down, his gaze never wavering from the fight and she reads his message loud and clear.

Ushio exhales.

“I’d rather die than give up.”

Swallowing down the bitter memory of salt burning the lining of her throat, she watches as his blood paints the air and his body fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eeeeeeeeeeh...i'll be honest. i'm not happy with this chapter and that's probably why it took so long. ive rewritten it soooo many times ugh im really struggling to write Shio properly? how strange is that? i.....sigh. don't even really have much to say about it tbh. please enjoy! i'll probably be editing as i reread and please let me know whatcha think!


	5. Chapter 5

There are things about Ushio that Zoro can’t help but notice. She has a large presence about her for someone who barely spoke. It leaks into the air around her, like the humid air that sometimes follow rain. It makes Zoro’s skin itch.

It doesn’t make any sense. She’s...small. Ushio is small. She’s barely the same height as Luffy and it’s...strange. Because she’s strange. With her chiming beads and dark eyes. Vanishing fingers and that wild look in her eyes while she stares at the man choking in her hands.

Ushio speaks very little but her voice always drew your attention, the strange lilt filtering through the air, husky and smooth. Her quietness wasn’t just in the way she barely spoke.

Ushio doesn’t make any sounds, besides the barest shuffling of her clothes if you strain to listen. The small amount of time they have spent on Merry taught Zoro that the beads were a way for her to announce her presence; otherwise she is something in the background you don’t notice until she is right there in your face.

Ushio’s face...

Zoro doesn’t think he will ever forget the way she looked that first time on the shoreline. Standing there staring at them, staring into them. How she looked, eyes hooded, like she was seeing something she had already seen before and it made her sad.

It is hard to ignore the kind of beauty that comes from a girl who looks like she came, flying, on the last gust of wind and is looking to take off again.

It is hard to reconcile that with the girl who kisses children on the forehead as a hello. The girl who laughs with her entire body, shoulders shaking and eyes shut in mirth. Clutching her stomach, curling up, making herself seem even smaller. The way her top lip nearly vanishes when her lips curl into a smile, or the way the corner of her eyes crinkle with delight as she fights. The way tears look trailing down her cheeks.

He sees the way Luffy looks at her, like she’s sometimes the answer to a question he didn’t know he was asking, and some part of him understands it. But the other parts of him...waits. Because Ushio is strange and Zoro has enough problems with dark-haired girls with sad eyes.

“Zoro!!”

Luffy’s scream reverberates through her bones and she almost chokes on her next inhale. Zoro’s blood is arching through the air and she’s wrapping the air around herself forcefully, her hair whipping up and around her. Luffy leaps for Mihawk and she leaps for Zoro.

He _just _begins to sink underneath the waves and the sea water brushes the tips of her toes and she grinds her teeth. She whips around to look at Johnny and Yosaku, stuck in shock that she’s suddenly _there_.

“What are you standing there for!? Jump!” The words are harsh and she knows she’ll apologize for them later, but she’s stuck in a weird place between fear and resignation. Knowing that Zoro is going to be fine, but having to watch. Always _fucking watching_.

She knows the wind around her is lashing out, she knows she should have better control than this, knows this is something she is going to go through over and over and ove-

A hand lands on her shoulder. A body brushes against her back. Usopp squeezes her shoulder with trembling fingers and she is quick to grasp his hand in her own. Their fingers cling to one another and she lets out an exhale that trembles.

“No matter how many years it takes, I will hold this seat of the strongest and wait for you.” Her gaze rests on the man responsible. The man who is eventually going to give her one of her nakama a fighting chance in the New World. The man with the yellow-eyes.

Those eyes make direct eye-contact with her own and she realizes that he’s been watching her. She feels her eyes narrow and the corner of his mouth ticks up. A whisper curls around her ears and her clinging fingers become a fist, curling around Usopp’s fingers.

“Surpass this sword.”

Zoro is...warm. Wado is still there with him. There are hands on his chest, pushing, and water is forcing its way out of his lungs. He coughs harshly once, tastes iron in his mouth, before he remembers. Hand tight around Wado, he fights the pain and opens his eyes.

Ushio is there, hovering over him. It’s her blood-soaked hands on his chest. Water is dripping down her front, shirt wet and clinging, and there’s a second where Zoro realizes that isn’t a good thing. Water is bad and she’s weak, someone needs to-

“Zoro, bro!”

“Say something!”

“Zoro...” She breathes his name out like it’s a secret between the two of them. Her eyes gleam, like she’s holding back tears, but they’re not sad. He realizes..it’s the first time she’s ever said his name and it fills him with a sudden strength, tears flooding his eyes. Closing his eyes, his hand shot ups and he pours every bit of himself into the words he says next.

“L-Luffy? Can you hear me?”

Zoro knows hardships. Zoro knows what happens when death comes for someone you love. Zoro knows a type of hunger where rice crusted in sugar and dirt taste decadent. Zoro knows the weight of a promise that creeps behind your every step like a shadow. But this...promise, this vow.

This is easy.

“Did I worry you? You need no less than the world’s greatest swordsman, right?” He can’t help the cough that rips through him. The hands on his shirt pull the fabric tighter, tightly enough that his eyes open, and Ushio is staring, staring with such an open look of wonder that Zoro can’t look away, even as his mouth moves, even as tears mix with the water clinging to both of them.

“I..I-I will not be defeated ever again! Until the day I defeat him and become a master swordsman...I will never be defeated! Got any problem with that...” He inhales sharply, ignoring the burning in his throat. His eyes are darting all over Ushio’s face because he knows this is her doing, the way the air comes easy to him, clean and crisp.

“...King of the Pirates?!”

She smiles, soft and sweet, the smile that crinkles the corner of her eyes and Luffy’s laugh rings in his ears. A hand leaves his chest to rest on the side of his face. Eyes closing, he can’t help the way he leans into it as darkness clings to the edges of his vision.

“Nope!”

“We’re busting in.” She blinks at the Zoro standing, posed, while ignoring Usopp and Johnny’s sputtering behind her. Zoro is wrapped up in more bandages than skin and he wants to _bust in_?

“You want to-” He cuts her off mid-sentence and her eyebrows jump high on her forehead.

“Forget that tedious stuff. Luffy told me to bring her back. I’m gonna do that, no matter who-” She cuts him mid-sentence, feeling a little petty, and uses air pressure to slam him back down into a sitting position. With an amusing indignant squawk, he plops down. Standing over him, she places her hand on his head softly and tilts his head back so they can make eye-contact.

He stares, eyes narrowed into a glare, and she smiles.

“Let’s not be hasty.” She straightens up, releasing him, and closes her eyes with a sigh. She hears some shuffling behind her. Quickly opening her eyes, she turns around to catch Usopp and Johnny in the act, rope danging between them. They freeze.

“We’re not tying him up.” The words are stubborn and belligerent, but she _refuses_.

“He was nearly sliced and diced,” She politely ignores the annoyed noise behind her, “and you want to tie him up so he won’t cause _trouble_?”

“Big sis, Zoro will-”

“Shio-”

“He won’t cause trouble if I’m here.” She declares, daring her brother and Johnny to argue with her. Johnny looks a weird mixture of envious and mystified while Usopp looks strangely suspicious, eyes glancing between her and the boy behind her.

“I don’t need-” Zoro starts to protest behind her. She hears him start to stand again and she is quick to whip around, using air to sit him back down on their boat with a thud. His barely concealed groan only solidifies her resolve.

“Yes, you do!” She snarls and he freezes in his stubborn attempt to stand again. “You stupid foolish boy! You nearly ripped your chest open trying to foolishly do fucking _push-ups_ like you didn’t just have a showdown with a goddamn Shichibukai. You trying to die? Not on my fucking watch.”

She whips back around to the idiots and they flinch at the look on her face.

“I cannot believe you would tie him up knowing he’s barely keeping his chest together!” She cuts off their sputtering with a glare. “Merry is right there.” They all follow her finger to see their flag waving in the distance.

“Bring in the ship right beside Merry, take it slow.”

“Y-yea, big sis.”

“S-scary Shio.”

They coast toward Merry and she can barely make out the three fishmen on the dock. She’s stepping a bit closer to the edge of the boat to get a closer look when a hand grasps the back of her shirt and tugs her down roughly. Barely saving herself from slamming her forehead against the hull, she throws a startled look at Usopp, crouched down and hiding.

“What on _earth-_”

“S-s-s-shio, what are you doing?!” His whisper is more like a shout in her ear and she leans back as he brings his face inches from hers. She sees Johnny nodding vigorously over his shoulder and she bites back a laugh. She pulls away from her brother and, after taking a step back, stands.

She looks back out at the fishmen who are now staring back, noticing the her standing from the short distance from the dock. She sees their mouths open to exchange words and she blanks.

There’s a split second where she is not sure what to do next, or how she should let things happen. Her eyes dart between Zoro, Usopp, and Johnny and she doesn’t know what to do. Should she let Zoro be taken? Where should she go? Should she just stop the fishmen? Should she-

A shoulder brushing against her pulls her from her panicking thoughts. Zoro is there, standing beside her, and he’s looking at her with a strange look on his face. His mouth opens and starts to form the shape her name and she suddenly knows what to do.

She reaches a hand out in front of her and brings it down suddenly and violently. Small cuts appears on the visible parts of her skin and rips form on her shirt as it colors with the slow, leaking blood of her wounds.

Usopp makes a startled nose and Johnny screams. Thinking quickly, she snatches their abandoned rope from the ground and thrusts it at them.

“Hurry. Tie us up!”

“W-what? You were just-”

“Do it! Please!” Her shouted words startle them into doing it and she finds herself shoulder to shoulder with Zoro tied around the mast. Usopp and Johnny pull away from them and she hears the splashes of water that tell her the fishmen are coming toward them. Time seems to slow as she makes eye-contact with her brother, her smart, smart otouto, who suddenly understands what she’s trying to do.

“I’m not going to leave you here.” The words are quiet but everyone hears him. She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the mast, wondering where this courage came from. She ignores the pit in her stomach that always comes when she sees something she’s change. Even if it’s for the better.

“You have to.” She says, softly, and uses the air around him to tug at the bandanna on his head. There’s a silence where she inhales the sun-warmed air around them. She exhales, relaxing against the mast completely, as she hears two bodies hit into the water.

It seems like mere seconds later that there’s suddenly two fishmen in their faces and Ushio retreats into her mind. She tries to recall the events that are going to happen. Nami’s ‘betrayal’. The reveals of her backstory. Luffy’s strawhat on her head. A bleeding tattoo.

She can’t….interfere as much here. Not like she did with Syrup. Syrup was _hers_. Hers and Usopp’s. Just like how this is Nami’s. She just..has to be patient.

So with hands and feet tied up, Ushio stares up at Arlong and waits.

“I’ll ask again...Just why have you come here?”

She still isn’t sure if she’s doing the right thing, being here with Zoro, instead of with her brother. Just letting this play out the way it’s supposed to. Frustration building, she makes a rough noise at the back of her throat that draws the attention of some of the fishmen.

One of them, a bold one, grabs her roughly by her hair and shakes her violently. Fighting back every instinct that tells her to fight, she lets her face hit the ground roughly and the taste of iron fills her mouth. He nearly grinds her face into the ground and she fights his hold enough to get a glimpse of his face. She memorizes it.

“Answer him!”

“We told you already! We’re looking for a girl, you half-fish bastard!” Zoro’s rough voice, filled with something she couldn’t decipher, cuts through the sudden tension. The fishman uses her hair to yank her back up in a sitting position and she sneers at the amused look on Arlong’s face.

“You’ve got a big mouth for a lowly human. I’ll excuse you this time, but never say ‘half-fish’ again. We fishmen are ‘evolved humans’.” His rant buzzes in her ears as her frustration mounts. Zoro is trying desperately to make it look like he’s not looking at her, but he is. She can nearly taste his confusion as much as she can taste the blood in her mouth. They just have to...wait.

A wisp of air carries a sound and she turns her head towards clicking heels. She meets Nami’s gaze blankly and she can see the moment that Nami registers that it is her sitting there, bloodied, with Zoro. Her eyes nearly go wide before she tries to hide it and Ushio doesn’t quite know how to describe the feeling that brews in the pit of her stomach.

With that feeling warming her belly, she watches as Nami sprouts her lies. She watches as Nami pronounces herself a pirate, the wrong kind, not one of _theirs_. She watches this young girl struggling to bear the weight of an entire town on her shoulders. She watches Nami’s face as Arlong’s ugly laugh fills the air, bouncing all around them, and that feeling blossoms until it spreads throughout her body.

“This girl’s like a cold-blooded witch, she’ll even forget about her own parent’s deat-”

Nami’s face goes still with blank wide-eyes for just a split second and, with a deep inhale, she realizes.

Ah, she thinks with a jolt, this is rage.

“Shut up.” It takes Nami a moment to realize that Ushio is the one who growled the words out. Her accent was thick and rough, her words almost indistinguishable. She’s hunched forward as if she's going to pounce.

Hair wild, blood running down her face, and shirt torn and bloody, Ushio looks feral. She’s bearing her teeth in a sneer and she looks one step from tearing the entire park apart. The silence that follows her words is heavy as everyone stares down at this girl.

“Huh?” Arlong questions, and it’s clear that he doesn’t actually expect Ushio speak again, but_ she does_. Nami laments the times where Ushio didn’t speak at all.

“You heard me the first fucking time, you _half-fi__sh-__”_

Nami panics. Before she can think about it, she swings. Blood sprays across the concrete ground and Ushio falls back with a grunt. She drags her back up by the collar of her shirt and Ushio….she laughs.

It wasn’t like the one back at Syrup. The one that was a cool breeze on a sunny day, filling you with a soothing warmth. This laugh was slow and harsh, cracking in the air like broken glass. Nami can’t stop the flinch that rocks through her body and Ushio, eyes close and throwing her head back, just _laughs_.

“How dare you talk to Arlong that way?!” Nami tries to say over the sound, but it’s lost. Lost in that horrible laughter that rings all around them. The fishmen tense all around them and Zoro leans forward like he’s about to do something stupid.

“Do what you have to do, Nami.” Ushio mumbles, that noise finally petering out. She speaks quietly enough that Nami has to lean in closer to hear her. Her eyes open into slits and Nami feels caught in the gaze of a snake deciding if it’s going to swallow you whole.

“Before I get tired of waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yohohohohoho a second update in same week? who am i?? 
> 
> in contrast to the last chapter, this was surprisingly very easy to write. honestly i fear i've made Zoro a little OOC and please let me give me critique! keep me humble. anywho i definitely said before that i wasn't going to rehash all of one piece and i definitely still don't plan on it BUT i do want to make sure i build Ushio's relationships up with the crew before i dive deep into what i actually want the story to focus on WHICH MEANS we're rehashing all the crews origin stories to a certain extent (lol poor Sanji but let's be real that origin was legit just him and luffy). i want to her to naturally fit into the story, despite being a person who knows how everything is going to play out. I'm not sure if I'm succeeding B U T ima try.
> 
> Shio got a bit of a potty mouth, huh? :D As always, thank you for reading~


	6. Chapter 6

Ushio doesn’t remember her past life well. She remembers bits and pieces, like the crumbs that fall off a cookie every time you take a bite.

Those useless crumbs meant the world to her.

The first couple of years of her life in this new world was nothing but her trying to grasp at those crumbs only for them to crumble to dust between her fingers. It is cruel that all she really does remember is pain and suffering.

Ushio remembers training her body to the point of sickness, still remembers the taste of bile coating her mouth. Remembers her handler standing over her, spitting venom. _You’re weak. Get up. Don’t make me waste my time._

Ushio remembers the way blood looks when it arches through the air. She remembers the sound a body makes when skewered on a blade. She remembers what the it feels like to have bones snap underneath her hands.

Ushio remembers all of this in bits and pieces, never clear and often coming to her in dreams.

The only thing she remembers clearly is the day she died.

Ushio remembers..._her._

Her smaller body huddles against her for warmth as they wait for their next target to reveal himself in the shipyard. The softest of laughs escapes her mouth, and she watches as the air fogs with it. She feels like she’s drowning underneath the weight of this warmth that surrounds them.

Here, in darkness under a waning moon, they are only Big Sister and Little Sister. Not monsters. Not..._things. _

“So how far did you get?”

A dramatic gasp escapes her as she pulls away to see Big Sister’s fully. Big Sister is watching avidly, amusement dancing in her eyes at her reaction.

“Ace!! He isn’t really dead, right?” She whispers to her, her fingers tugging urgently at her sleeve.

“Sis...” The way Big Sister speaks is just as dramatic as her earlier gasp and she has to bite back a small laugh.

“Nooooooo...poor Luffy.” All of their words are nearly soundless but she still smiles at the slight laugh that escapes BigSister.

She remembers looking up at her, watching as her smile blooms small but bright. Watching her eyes only just beginning to close with her smile when a red arches through the air.

She blinks and blood is spilling down the front of Big Sister’s shirt. She blinks and Big Sister’s eyes are wide as she reaches out to her. She blinks and hands are digging into her arms harshly as they yank them apart, Big Sister’s screaming filing the darkness.

“NO! Not her!”

Fighting their hold, she can’t stop the whine of pain that escapes clenched teeth as her arm snaps behind her. She watches Big Sister’s face crumble at the noise and she watches her mouth move for the last time just as a blade swings through the air.

“I love you.”

The blood nearly coats every inch of her and she screams. Screams as she grabs the blade that killed Big Sister, palm stinging, and swings. Screams as she is dragged to the dock. Screams as they tie her limbs to blocks and drop her into the crashing waves. Screams until the salt water burns her throat and all she knows is the dark.

She had thought she knew darkness but...

That darkness...that darkness that followed her death was all of her despair in grief surrounding her endlessly. It was her remembering her death on repeat. Remembering the look on Big Sister’s face. Remembering the way her blood looked splattered across the ground. Remembering that was the first and only time someone had told her they loved her.

That remembering...that darkness was only broken by warmth...and a whisper.

Banchina loves her children more than anything in the world.

Her baby boy, Usopp; with his large grin and inquisitive nature. Always bringing her the things he finds on the island with gleaming eyes. Her little girl, Ushio; always sneaking the last of the candies to neighborhood kids, with her curly hair always flying through the air as she chases after her clumsy brother. With that cute little accent that she desperately tries to cover up, embarrassed enough to rarely speak. With those dark, keen eyes always watching her when she thought she wasn’t looking.

When she was born, Ushio wouldn’t do anything but cry. Swatting at her hands when she tried to hold her when it was feeding time, biting at her with only her gums, little grip clinging to Usopp’s little onesie. Ushio, wailing, had cried like living was the worst possible thing that could be happening to her.

Then...Ushio began to have nightmares. Nightmares that make her scream loud enough to wake the entire house. Nightmares where she would scream out in a language Banchina has never heard before. She screams out a name, that much Banchina can understand. Banchina, for longer than is probably appropriate, keeps the twins sleeping in her room, feeling the keen absence of her husband.

It was easier though. Easier than letting her little girl suffer. When the screaming starts, Banchina reaches out to wrap her arms around Ushio and her baby breaks down into heavy sobs, mumbling words Banchina can’t begin to understand.

Her baby girl was in so much pain, unexplainable pain, and Banchina could do nothing.

The nightmares stop...or her baby gets better at hiding them. Eventually the twins begin to sleep in their shared room, her baby begins to hug her back, and her baby starts to watch them with those keen eyes. Almost like...she can’t bear to tear her eyes away from them.

“Mama...” A sharp tug at her skirt, brings her attention to the little one at her feet. Ushio is looking back at her, her little face in that lazy expression that Banchina thinks is the cutest thing in the world. How can a four year old look so serious?

“Baby, the candies are almost done.” Banchina smiles at the way her eyes gleam, dancing over to the oven. Banchina does not fight the urge to run her fingers through Ushio’s hair, the oil making the curls gleam in the kitchen light. Ushio’s attention turns back to her and her little fist clenches the skirt tighter.

“Mama...I-I..” Ushio’s stuttering is far more rare than Usopp’s excited muttering. It draws her attention immediately. She bends down so she is at eye level and gives her daughter her full attention.

“I-I think something is wrong with my...” She mumbles the words and her eyes dart around like it does when she is struggling to think of a word. She lets go of her skirt to point at Banchina’s ear.

“Hearing?” Banchina guesses and Ushio nods at her frantically, eyes big. Banchina fights the urge to smile at the rare, cute expression on her daughter’s face.

“Mama, there is this...sound and I c-can’t. Like w-whispering? I c-can’t understand it. It is too s-soft.” Ushio’s stumbling over her words and they’re frantic enough to make Banchina freeze. She hears the rest of what her daughter is saying as if in a trance as she is vividly reminded of a memory of her husband.

“_It’s rare that Shanks ever talks about Roger, if at all.” Her husband had mumbled to her in bed, in one of his rare visits. “But...the other day, while absolutely plastered, he mentioned how he always felt like Roger was listening to something that the rest of them couldn’t hear.”_

“_Huh? Are you messing with me?” She sat up, wrapping the sheets around her chest, and stared down at the man next to her. Yasopp grinned that grin that his children would later inherit, and tugged at the sheet. She laughed, unsuccessfully dodging his quick hands that drew her back to his chest._

_Their laughter petered out and Yasopp’s deep voice began to fill the air again. _

“_I know it sounds crazy but...there’s this thing. This thing that no one can really prove exists. It’s called….”_

Banchina comes out of the memory with a jolt, her daughter’s frantic mumbling still filling the air. Ushio has both hands clinging to her skirt and she’s looking at her with wet, pleading eyes.

“Mama, is it because of-” Her daughter mutters a words she can’t understand but she _knows_ what she’s trying to say. Knows what she means.

“Baby, calm down.” She draws her close to her and Ushio’s hands cling to her shirt desperately. Banchina blinks back tears as she tries to find the right words to say to her scared daughter. Her strong daughter who has already been given a heavy burden.

“Baby, there’s absolutely _nothing_ wrong with you. Do you hear me? Shio, you’re perfect.” Those hands cling tighter and Banchina curls her body around her, wants to surround her with her love.

“Shio, there’s nothing wrong with you. What you’re hearing...is a gift. It’s a gift that’s going to help you and your brother. It’s going to guide you, baby. It’ll never steer you wrong.” Her words come out clear and strong, and Ushio burys herself deeper into her chest.

“Baby, promise me you won’t mention this to anyone else? There are people out…who fear this skill. People who would...hurt you for being able to hear it.” Banchina pulls away from her daughter so she can see how serious she is. Ushio stares back, eyes-wide with tears clinging to her lashes. There’s a pause where Ushio’s eyes dart around, searching her face for something.

“Promise me, Ushio.” Those beautiful, keen eyes stare back at her and Ushio nods, clinging to her shirt.

“Mama...is this because of-” Her daughter starts to say, gaze moving from her face to the floor. Banchina hesitates for just a moment, watching her daughter struggle to find her words. Struggle to fight back that grief that comes when she’s reminded of how she’s here.

Banchina loves her children more than anything in the world and she knows this is not her daughter’s first time living.

Banchina stands, lifting her daughter up with her. Ushio lets out a cute yelp, arms coming around to wrap around her neck. Banchina smothers her smile at the noise into her daughter’s neck and Ushio releases a soft laugh that makes warmth bloom in her chest.

“No, baby. It’s not. You’re not even the first person I’ve heard of who has something like this.” Ushio pulls back enough to shoot her a dubious look that makes her laugh. Ushio watches her laugh with those keen eyes of hers, like she could spend the rest of this life watching her laugh.

Banchina smiles brightly at her and Ushio ducks back down to hide her flush face.

“What’s it called? The whispering.” She mumbles into her neck just as the timer dings. Allowing her daughter to cling to her, Banchina pulls the oven open one handed and the strong scent of cinnamon floods their kitchen. She listens to the pattering of running small feet announcing Usopp, who has clearly heard the timer.

“It’s called the Voice of All Things.”

Ushio tilts her head back against the stone walls surrounding them and sighs. The rope around her hands and feet dig tightly, and she can smell the blood in her hair. She thinks about the look on Nami’s face as they were dragged into the cell and closes her eyes, a familiar kind of regret filling her.

Ushio is tired. So very tired. So tired unwanted tears flood her eyes and she wishes, not for the first time, that she was back in that moment underneath the moon surrounded by warmth. Watching a small and bright smile form in the fogged air.

Not here, straining for whispers in a dark cell.

The walls around them does not allow her to hear the Voice on the wind that has been there since she was born in this world. A whispering that had first brushed against her ear, like the softest kiss. Muffled in a way she couldn’t understand it. She remembers the look on Banchina’s face when she confessed to what she was hearing. Pale skin somehow getting paler and pulling her close, body curling around hers as if to shield her from everything else in the world.

_Baby, promise me you won’t mention this to anyone else? _ _Promise me, Ushio_ _._

Her mother’s reaction made her think this whispering may have been a sign of her..strangeness. A sign of her not belonging. No one else could hear it and it was clear that it scared her mother.

Her mother banished those fears. Told her this Voice was meant to guide her. Help her. After all, it was the Voice that brought her to the devil fruit. It was the devil fruit that turned those whispers, those indistinguishable mumbles into words.

It’s just that...in this cell, the Voice doesn’t say a damn thing.

“I may be _stupid _and _foolish_ but...even I can see.” His words echo in their enclosed space, the anger and frustration grabbing her attention immediately. Ushio picks her head up and meets the dark gaze of Zoro.

“You’re hiding something.” The words fall from his lips casually, but she hears the accusation clearly. Zoro’s gaze sharpen and he leans forward from his position across from her. She fights to keep her expression blank as his words are sending a weird feeling up her spine and she’s fighting to vanish. To slip into the wind.

She can’t really remember, in her past, if Zoro was ever this….angry. Legitimately angry, with his brows furrowed and straining. Just like she can’t remember anything else.Only that there is pain and suffering in this world, just like her old one.

“Luffy isn’t going to...” He starts to say but cuts himself off with a loud enough scoff to make her flinch.

“You call me stupid and foolish but you can’t even trust your own _brother_. You can’t even trust your nakama to make their own decisions. That’s why you’re here right now, isn’t it?”

“What are you-” She tries to cut him off but Zoro bulldozes her words like she had never spoken in the first place.

“You and I both know you there is nothing here holding you back. Why are you here? What made you decide to stay with me?” His voice is getting louder and she stares, blankly, unused to being the subject to someone’s angry in this world.

“I just n-needed to-”

“_Needed to what? _You can’t just...b-bully people into decisions! We’re all here fighting for what we believe in! Risking our lives for our dreams!”

“What are you seeing?!” He shouts. She jerks backs at the words, head nearly slamming against the wall. “What are you seeing when you look at me? Luffy? We’re your nakama! Trust in us!”

His panting fills the quiet his words leave. She stares at him as he shuffles back to lean against the wall again, eyes closing like he didn’t just give her the reaming of her life. She tries to reflect on her actions before.

Hurting herself to ensure she comes with Zoro. Nearly interrupting Zoro’s fight with Mihawk. Not even allowing her brother to stand up for himself with Kuro.

Warmth floods her eyes and she has to bite back a noise at the feeling of tears. She was never this weepy_ before. _These people. Her nakama. They were giving her something that she had only gotten a taste of in her previous life. Something her mama had started the very first time she allowed a broken girl to cling to her. She...just...

“I-I..” He peaks an eye open at her stuttering which makes her flush. She darts her eyes away from him, peaking at the bars in the door that leads to their escape.

“I just want to...keep you all safe. Protect you all. I don’t want any of you to...suffer.” She finishes in a whisper. A snort breaks the heavy silence that follows her words and she looks at him. He’s staring at her with a smug smirk that makes his eyes dance and her breath catches.

“Tch. We don’t need you stand between us and the rest of the world, Ushio.” The way he says her name fills her with a heat that spreads from the bottoms of her tied up feet to the top of her head. She finds herself hanging off his every word, watching his mouth move.

“We need you to stand beside us.”

The Voice comes rushing back to her as a sharp breeze comes in through the bars on the door, whispers flooding her ears and she closes her eyes with a smile.

_Go, little one._

A thud and Zoro’s startled gasp makes her open her eyes. His gazes rests on her feet and she grins, realizing that she’s already started to vanish.

“Maa, don’t get all serious on me, Zoro.” She mumbles and her grin widens at his scoff.

“Yea, well don’t be an idiot and we won’t have any problems.” Zoro’s grin is bright and wide and it makes her laugh, the sound filling the air between them.

They can only trade one more smile as the rest of the rope falls to the floor with a thump and she flings herself into the breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> l o l i really, really did plan to update sooner than this........but life kinda hits you hard. very sick at the moment.......enough about me ANYWHO. 
> 
> this is unbeta'd and so i will just be hobbled in my bed rereading it obsessively and making corrections as i see them. so i do apologize for weird grammar or spelling mistakes.
> 
> we're LEARNING ABOUT MY CHILD, USHIO. Also yes Ushio knows NOTHING about Haki. Literally, she (barely) remembers up until Ace's death which is like HILARIOUS. So yup no Haki here, only the Voice of All Things which let's be real who needs Haki when the Wind is talking to ya. i kid i kid. anyway was yall expecting that Banchina flashback???? BAHAHAHAHA honestly writing that was kinda emotional for me ngl. Moms, man. Shio needs some loving, okay??? i should probably add an angst tag, huh?
> 
> honestly i really should have made this more of an interlude B U T i really wanted to include the Zoro and Ushio conversation in this chapter as a development for her character and realizing that her nakama are actually people, with feelings and goals and aspirations blah blah. not just 'i must protecc' vibes she got going on. i THINK yall got a SMALL hint of that in her kind of surprisingly (maybe not surprisingly?) emotional response to Zoro's promise. Idk Shio is really trying, yall. Going from trained killer to the twin sister of Usopp? AND I OOP. 
> 
> thank you guys so much for your kind words! i really haven't had time to respond to anyone since the initial responses and i apologize. please enjoy this new chapter and comment to let me know whatcha think! I promise I really do read them all and take them into consideration when writing.


	7. Chapter 7

Arlong’s laughter is still ringing in her ears and Nami finds herself remembering the look on Ushio’s face.

_Do what you have to do, Nami._

She finds herself flashing back to the look on Ushio’s face when Kuro fought her grasp, purple-faced and desperate. Blank-faced, like always, but her eyes. It was her eyes that Nami cannot, could not, stop thinking about.

Ushio’s eyes are pools of darkness that draw you in, surrounded by thick lashes and heavy lids. They lure you in the same way you can’t help gazing at the blue-black night sky, twinkling with billions of lights.

In that moment where she was gazing down at a dying man in her relentless grip, her eyes were fathomless, dark holes. Just a suffocating, inescapable void.

Nami is not like the others, where she can ignore the way Ushio slinks around them. Silent but always watching. Her hair-raising gaze combined with her wild, chiming hair, and slouching posture. Like a tiger trying to blend in with white-spotted deer.

Ushio is dangerous, much more dangerous than she lets on and she has moments where she slips.

_Before I get tired of waiting_.

Ushio is also caring...much more caring than she lets on.

It slips in the way she tugs on Usopp’s bandanna when he is being particularly mouthy only for his outlandish lies to become more extravagant in response. Or the way she allows Luffy to cling to her, wrapping his arms around her as many times as he wants, his wild laughter echoing all around them as he tucks his smile into her hair.

Ushio watches them all with those dark, caring eyes and Nami watches back with a longing that feels like it is eating at her very bones.

Nami yearns. Yearns to hear laughter on the open sea and the babbling of a liar. Yearns to hear the snoring of a lazy swordsman and the chiming of bells in time with a breeze.

She screams the name of her tormentor as her dreams, her once reachable dream, shatters. She hopes for something she doesn’t think she’ll ever get with Arlong’s laughter echoing in her ears.

Great heaving sobs shake her body as blood runs down down her arm. The hilt of the knife burns in her grip but she can’t stop. Not when she has nothing else to lose. Not when there is nothing else she can do.

The knife feels like a rope finally snapping and Nami chokes on her next sob. A hand grasps her own and Nami jolts out of her spiraling thoughts to see Luffy staring down at her. She hears herself speaking, yelling, crying as if through a fog as Luffy’s gaze never wavers from her face. The words fill the stagnant air between them and Luffy’s gaze is patient, waiting.

Nami is tired of waiting.

“Luffy. Help me.”

There’s a moment where Luffy’s gaze is sharp like the bloody knife on the ground and Nami hears the chiming of bells in the air. She startles as a straw-hat lands on her head and Luffy is already walking past her.

She feels the roughness of the straw beneath her hands, the weight of her cap..of Luffy’s treasure covering her.

“We’re going.” A warm encompassing breeze follows Luffy’s words and Nami’s head lifts to see everyone there, waiting for her. Ready to fight for her.

“L-Luffy.”

A hand covers the bleeding wound on her arm and her head swings around to see Ushio kneeling beside her. Her hair is swinging in a breeze she can’t feel and she’s cleaned off the blood on her face. There’s still stains and holes in her shirt, her hair is as wild as ever, but her eyes.

Her eyes are warm.

They’re all watching Nami’s cage burn. The smell of rum is clinging to both her and Usopp and Zoro’s snores are faint under the roar of the fire and the screaming from inside the tower.

Nami’s breath is coming out fast and uneasy and Ushio can almost taste the worry in the air.

The Voice is silent in the wake of Luffy’s determination and resolve. She savors the silence as she watches Nami’s desk fly out the window. She savors the silence as Nami’s shackles are broken with relish.

A trembling hand grasps her fingers tightly and she looks, expecting Usopp.

Nami’s brown eyes is staring back at her, glassy and hard with something that makes Ushio smile. Ushio intertwines their fingers and, together, they turn towards the towers as the body of Arlong crashes through to the ground level.

The ground trembles as the tower collapses. People run all around them and her crew waits.

Their captain emerges, standing tall and victorious. People stop their panicking and watch. Bloody and hair shielding his eyes, he screams.

“Nami!”

The Voice is loud in her ears as her captain declares his nakama to the world.

“You’re my friend!” The words resonate through her and she turns her head to watch emotion well up in Nami, loud and pure.

“Y-yeah.”

There are screams as the people of the village cheer around her and she can’t help the laughter that tumbles out of her mouth. Nami turns to her quickly at the sound and Ushio wraps an arm around her neck to pull her into her chest, barely able to tuck her head atop Nami’s.

“W-what are you doing!? L-let go!” The words are indignant and muffled but Nami’s hands are curling into the material of her shirt.

“Shio?” Usopp’s voice makes her use the air to pull him close and she relaxes fully at the feel of her brother’s arms wrapping around them both.

“Group hug!” Luffy’s shout is the only warning they get before stretched limbs wrap around them many times.

Hot, bloody and sweaty, they’re all crushed together. Nami and Luffy bicker directly in her ear and Usopp is whining about not being able to breath. She hears the sounds of Zoro’s snoring picking back up and Sanji screaming at Luffy and Usopp for being too rough.

She smothers her smile in her captain’s hat.

Sanji remembers meeting Ushio for that brief moment on the Baratie where her smile lit up his world like fireworks. Her soft, delicate hand brushed through his hair and he, for a brief moment, knew heaven’s light.

Sanji recognizes an angel when he sees one.

That didn’t distract from the fact that Ushio was a little…different. In the most attractive way, of course.

Ushio likes to…hover, literally and figuratively. Sanji often sees her hovering over Nami as she draws her maps. Sees her hovering over Usopp when he experiments with his ammunition. Sees her lingering around the doorway as he cooks their meal, eyes intent.

The only people she doesn’t hover over are Luffy and Zoro, and that is absolutely because they do not allow it.

Once they see her at the edge of their vision, they grab her and haul her off to wherever they want. What they want? Sanji does not know, but it boils his blood to think of those two _imbeciles_ ever laying a hand on Ushio.

How dare they lay a finger on her wild curls that brush against her face in the most charming way, beads gleaming like stars. Or the way her shirts are always so baggy that her brown shoulder peaks out in the most adorable way. Or her gaze, lidded and lazy, as she watches Usopp speak. Or the way her finger tap against her full top lip in thought when Nami asks her a question.

“A-Ah...Excuse me-”

Or her husky voice, warmed with her accent, that sends the strangest tingles down his spine.

“Sanji...are you-”

Or the way her eyes closes in brief pleasure every time she eats his cooking, like-

A fingers taps the middle of his forehead and Sanji jolts out of his thoughts with a sqawk, water splashing around his hands in the sink. Ushio is staring back at him, face blank and tilt to the side like she’s seeing something that vaguely interests her.

She’s leaning in rather close to his face and his heart races at the small distance.

“Are you feeling alright? Your face is red.” Her breath hits his face at the same time the back of her hand brushes against his forehead. He notices that she has to use her power to hover the inches it takes to reach his forehead and he finds himself hopelessly charmed.

“U-U-U-U-Ushio!” His stuttering makes her blink cutely and suddenly he’s hacking up bubbles as he drops a plate, bubbles flying up in the air.

His hacking is masked by the door slamming open. Usopp is standing there with a yawning Zoro behind him.

“Sic ‘em, Zoro!” Usopp screams, pointing at him dramatically. Ushio draws away from where she was rubbing his back, to his utter disappointment.

“Otouto? What are you….?” She trades a loaded look with Zoro, which has both Usopp and Sanji _trading_ a look, before she sighs. She brushes a tangled curl away from her face and Sanji wants to _scream _because of the small smile that blooms on her face.

She walks up to Usopp and tugs in bandanna over his eyes harshly, causing his hair to fluff up unrestrained like a giant cloud. She swats at his pinching hands and uses the collar of his shirt to drag him out the door.

“S-Shio! Don’t let me catch you _a-alone_ with San-”

“Don’t let you? You’re hilarious. What was Zoro going to do anyway?”

“Protect your virtue!”

Peals of her laughter warm the air like heady fire and Sanji grips the counter because he _refuses _to leave his kitchen in a mess just because he wants to follow that laughter.

“Zoro can barely protect himself.”

“Hah?! What was that? Fight me.” Sanji splashes water into a lingering Zoro’s open, snarling mouth with a sneer. His hacking joins Ushio’s laughter and Sanji hides his smile among the suds as he speaks.

“Oi! Don’t lay a hand on Shio-swan!”

“Have you guys seen Ushio?” Became a common question on Merry to no one’s surprise. Ushio does not appear if she does not want to be seen, and you will not notice her until she _let__s_ you.

She doesn’t have a designated space on Merry like the rest of them. She floats between them all like an aimless bird, resting to take a breath before traveling on the next breeze.

Once her name is spoken though, she always appears. It is a weird combination of freaky and cool.

“How does your power work?” Nami cannot help but ask while they’re all kind of dozing in a pile on the deck, making their way to Loguetown.

Luffy visibly perks up from his position of laying across Ushio’s lap, straw-hat laying gently across his chest. Usopp stops his tinkering to shoot a look at Nami from his hunched position near Luffy’s feet and Nami ignores the way Sanji sits up in one of their few sun chairs.

Ushio opens one bleary eye to look at her from her position leaning against a snoozing Zoro. Those two have a strange relationship that Nami has tried to question Ushio about, but Ushio always gets a _blanker_ expression on her face like she has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.

It’s dumb because Ushio _always_ knows what she’s talking about like the freaky, scary girl she is. Nami hates that she thinks it’s hilarious.

“I know you ate a fruit like Luffy but...” The questions lingers in the air and Nami watches as Ushio’s eyes fully open and she stares at her. Ushio’s stare no longer makes Nami want to look away. Honestly, Nami tends to find it hard to tear her gaze away at all.

“Oh...” Ushio starts, shifting a bit to get more comfortable. Zoro’s head tilts to rest atop of hers, despite the fact that he’s no longer snoring, and Nami fights back a laugh at the glare Usopp shoots at him.

“I ate the Kūki Kūki no Mi. It’s a Logia type that allows me to manipulate and...become air.” Ushio says quietly, twirling her fingers and air dances across the strands of Luffy’s hair resting in her lap. His giggling fills the air and Ushio’s face becomes...soft.

Nami has the urge to join their warmth and, with relish, she succumbs to her desire. The squeak of the chair draws their attention as Nami gets up and makes her way toward them. She hears Sanji moving as she settles in the space beside Ushio, bending her knees and tucking her bare toes underneath Luffy’s back. She rests her head against Ushio’s shoulder, feeling her hair and braids brushing against her face and shoulders. Sanji is sitting next to Usopp now, tugging lightly at the fur on the bottom of Luffy’s shorts in distraction as he listens to the conversation.

“It can be a little...” Ushio starts again once they’re both settled.

“Overpowered?” Usopp snorts.

“Awesome!” Luffy gasps out excitedly.

“Annoying.” Zoro’s grumbles.

Ushio’s eyes dance with laughter even as she makes her mouth frown at them.

“….Overwhelming.” Usopp’s tinkering stops and Nami sees the stare he levels at his sister. It’s an intimate look, speaking on their closeness, their shared bond on siblings, and it makes Nami a little homesick.

“When I first ate the fruit….I was lost for a few days.” The air stills around them as they process what she says.

“Lost?” Sanji whispers, cutting through the silence.

“Mhmm.” Ushio hums, fingers brushing through Luffy’s hair to comb through the tangles she created. Luffy is staring up at her, eyes dark and hands almost clenching his hat.

“The air we breathe is powerful and all-consuming. It’s everywhere all the time. It was hard trying to separate myself from it. It was like...one minute I was a person, Ushio. The next, I was the breeze that cards through your hair in a cold night. I was the steam that wafts off the freshly baked pie on oba-san’s window. I was the salty air that rolls over the village at dawn. I...wasn’t in a good place either. Mama had just...”

The way her voice cracks on the words makes Nami bite back memories of Bell-mère.

“...and I think some part of me was looking for an escape. Usopp was the one who brought me back. I heard his voice calling on the wind and realized who I was and who I wasn’t.”

It suddenly makes sense why Ushio always comes when you say her name. Or how wind caresses your face before she arrives. Or the way her beads chime. It was sort of her way of letting you know that she’s there, she’ll be there. She is all around them.

“I trained myself rigorously after that. To be able to know when to pull back on my fruit powers. If I lose myself in the air, it’s hard to pull myself out. The air, the wind it...” She stumbles on her words in a way that’s...strangely like Usopp’s lies. “...it can be very loud.”

Luffy shifts underneath her hands, one of his hands reaching to grasp hers. Ushio jolts underneath Nami’s cheek and she can’t see Ushio’s face but she can see Luffy’s.

Luffy’s face is doing that thing where he is seeing, hearing something beyond what you are saying, like there is a message in Ushio’s words just for him and he is making sure he does not missing it.

Nami has _questions_.

“It really isn’t that powerful though. I mean...” Ushio starts to say but lets out a small laugh as they all direct a dead-panned look at her. Embarrassingly, Nami catches them all smiling in the wake of her laughter as it becomes less rare around them.

Their laughter peters out as they all settle back in and a peaceful silence settles over them.

“What about the other stuff?” Zoro doesn’t move from his position as he speaks but Nami feels Ushio stiffen underneath her cheek.

“Other...stuff?”

“Your fruit doesn’t teach you how to fight the way you do.” Zoro sounds a little annoyed at having to explain himself and Ushio somehow gets even more tense.

“I’m not sure what you-”

The words are barely spoken when Usopp drops his newest ball to the ground.

It cracks open with a vengeance and a putrid smell surrounds them. Coughing and gagging fills the air as everyone scrambles to get away from the smell.

“Usopp, what the fuck?!”

“Ow, ow. Sorry, my hand slip. Ouch!”

“Don’t you touch Nami-swan!”

“Maa, maa there’s no need for violence.”

“Ushio, do something about the smell!”

“Shishishishishishi!”

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

The words are quiet and buried into the skin of his neck. Usopp smothers his laughter into her hair.

“Yea, yea I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .......anD I OPP. I live, bitches. 
> 
> Anyway, feeling much better. Thanks for the well wishes! Um...............I'm a little embarrassed about this chapter because this is honestly something I was writing while desperately trying to make myself feel good and it SHOWS. 
> 
> l o l honestly we're just wrapping up Nami's story here and exploring Ushio's relationship with the crew. FILLER NGL and you can tear long crew bonding between islands from my cold, dead hands, okay?!? 
> 
> ANYWAY hopefully we'll get much longer chapters in the future because after this we're basically heading for the grandline and stuff...i've def written up a bunch but idk im hesitating with it comes to certain events in the future.
> 
> anywho don't hesitate to let me know about my terrible writing skills, okay??? im posting this after like rereading it once, so i apologize for any grammatical/spelling mistakes. i'll reread, don't worry. no epic ushio in this chapter but come on...don't we love a soft Ushio, too??


	8. Chapter 8

“So I was thinking about adding some salt to one of my bombs because...” The chatter of her brother is nice background noise while they walk through the crowded streets of Loguetown. She is following him closely, their fingers loosely tangled.

He’s swinging their hands to and fro in a way that makes her think of the way he used to do it as children, when they had scabs on their knees from tripping all over each other. She looks down at their entangled fingers, the browns of their skin mingling together, and she savors it.

“I’m glad I listened to you about the sulfur thing though. Everyone’s reaction was a great test to see...”

Usopp is looking down at some kind of strange purple fruit when Ushio sees the shop. She purposely bumps against her brother’s shoulder, stopping him mid-sentence. He predictably jumps and she doesn’t bother hiding her amusement. He glares before his eyes follow where her finger is pointing. He stares for a long second before he turns incredulous eyes at her.

“Let’s go there next.” She tugs lightly at their hands and Usopp squints at her. She makes sure to make her eyes big and wide, tilting her head to add to the effect. Usopp untangles their fingers with a sigh. She blinks and his fingers are pinching her nose tightly.

“Hah?!” She whines out and Usopp laughs at her loudly. She tries to tug backward but he follows, leaning in close. His breath hits her face as he speaks and she gags loudly just to see him glare at her.

“Don’t think I don’t know why you’re interested in something like that. You shouldn’t let _boys_,” The way he says the word makes her want to laugh but she can’t because of his _fingers_, “influence you like this.”

She frees herself with a dramatic gasp and Usopp throws her an unimpressed look. Rubbing at her nose, she turns away from him completely.

“No one is _influencing_ me, you dummy.” She politely ignores his laugh at her weak insult. “I just...think they’re cool. Plus, didn’t Dad...” She trails off, hating the fact that she is mildly embarrassed.

A weird silence lingers between them that makes her squirm.

“Forget about it.” She says and turns back to the stand her brother was looking at. She hears her brother sigh before she’s shaking back and forth with how roughly he’s rubbing her hair.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you!?” She snaps, tugging at his hands.

“Don’t pout, you mouth breather.” Usopp laughs, finally letting go of her. She frantically tries to savage her _already_ wild hair. Glaring at her brother, she tugs her fingers through her wild curls and braids before she tugs it all up into a twisted bun at the top of her head. Taking a leather cord from her brother, she ties it around with bun.

Her hands are barely back at her side before Usopp tangles their fingers together again. She looks and he’s grinning at her in a way that has her immediately returning it. They share the smile before he’s tugging her in the direction of the shop.

“Oooo, my otouto is so graciously treating his neechan.”

“Treating?! What do you mean-”

“So generous, so gracious.”

She forgot. She forgot about this part. How could she forget this part?

There are gray clouds circling the sky, darkening the previous bright day. The wind picks up and Ushio is one step behind Usopp and Nami and the next, she’s not.

She is alone, staring up at a clown with a sword. She doesn’t remember how she...lost Usopp. She doesn’t remember anything past being nearly forcibly taken by the wind and being here in the crowd. Her ears are throbbing but it’s nothing compared to the screeching she hears on the wind.

Thunder reverberates through her bones as she stares transfixed at the execution stand. She is watching the clown’s mouth move and she can_ feel_ the murmuring of the crowd but the Voice is ringing all around her in the wind, the air. So loud that she’s struggling to _**stay**_**. **

_Little one, Little one, Little one._

_Listen._

“I’m the man who’ll be King of the Pirates!!” Luffy calls out to the wind and it drives through the noise. She feels the way the words play and vibrate through the air. And the air answers.

The wind rattles her ear drums, drowning out all other sound, and she tastes blood in her mouth.

Zoro swings, over and over again, but he’s not getting closer to the stand. To his _captain_.

Luffy’s words echoes in his ears and he ignores the tight pit in his stomach that says they won’t make it.

It is in the ensuring silence after those words that he spots her. She’s standing there at the back of the crowd, facing the execution stand. Her hair is unraveling from her bun, curls and loosened braids falling and he can see she has lost some of her beads. Head tilted to the side like she’s trying to hear better, she looks like a bystander.

Ducking under a swing, he screams.

“**Ushio! Do something!” **

She doesn’t flinch. He leaps forward and grabs her roughly by the shoulder, pulling her to face him and ignoring the gasp he startles out of her.

“Didn’t you hear me?! Use your powers and-” He cuts himself off when he sees her face.

Ushio...she has blood running down the side of her mouth from a bitten lip. Her breath is hitching through that bloody mouth and her hands are clenching the fabric of her shirt.

Her eyes, hazy and dark, dart from his face to the men surrounding him. The men are pushed back with a gust of wind so suddenly and sharply that they don’t have time to scream. Her falling curls push back with the gust and her ears are nothing but _air_.

He grabs her face between his hands, yanking her close enough that he can smell the blood in her mouth. He opens his mouth to scream over the sound of the wind and her hands land on his throat, like she’s trying to feel the vibration of his words.

“Ushio!! We don’t have _time._ Save him!”

“Zoro...” She mumbles out. “T-They won’t...”

Her hands are trembling around his neck as she whispers.

“I c-can’t.”

“Zoro! Ushio!” The shout draws both of their attention to their captain. Luffy’s eyes are closed with the force of his grin and Zoro feels Ushio sag underneath his hands.

“Sanji! Usopp! Nami! Sorry, I’m dead.”

The sword swings.

“Where’s Ushio?” Zoro asks the question with gritted teeth and Nami makes loaded eye-contact with Usopp. Breaking eye-contact, Usopp huffs as he squints at Zoro.

Zoro glares back.

They all notice that there was an odd air around Zoro and Ushio after Loguetown. The atmosphere isn’t awkward, per se. Just not their normal...tension that makes Nami asks Ushio all sorts of questions in their room at night.

“She’s not coming when I call.” Zoro finally relents under Usopp’s worsening squint. His words make Usopp and Nami trade another look between them and Zoro explodes.

“Will you stop with the fucking looks-”

“Look, she’s probably with Luffy.” Nami smirks as Zoro’s face does a weird thing and Nami loves a chance when she sees one.

“I think she’s been with him since we sailed….Jealous?” She asks, making sure she has a clear view of both of the boys’ faces.

Usopp looks like he’s bitten into a lemon and she thinks she can hear Zoro’s teeth grinding in his mouth.

“Jealous?” A husky voice sounds behind her and they all jump. They turn and there’s Ushio. Her hair is shiny with fresh oils and she’s braided it into a crown wrapping around her head, little curls resting around her face. She’s dressed in a soft white t-shirt dress that dances across her thighs in the sea breeze and she’s staring at them, face blank.

“What does he have to be jealous of?” Ushio asks, fingers tugging at the collar of her dress.

There’s an awkward silence where they all stare and Ushio stares back. Zoro shifts in place and Ushio’s gaze lands on him, her hands stopping.

“I wanted to-”

“I was taking a bath-”

Nami and Usopp’s heads swivel back and forth between the two of them as their words awkwardly jumble together.

The atmosphere gets _worse._

A glimmer of gold in a ear catches Nami’s eye and she comes to a decision. Nami jumps up, drawing all the attention to herself. She drags Usopp to his feet, ignoring his yelp, and starts pushing him to the door that leads below the deck.

“Stop pushing me!”

“A-ah. Well, would you look at the time! I think Sanji said he was almost done with dinner and he needed help setting the table. Right, Usopp?” She says over his shouting.

“If you think I’m gonna leave her alone with-”

“I said…right, Usopp?” She growls the words down at him and Usopp pauses. He chances a glance behind them and Nami looks too.

Ushio and Zoro are just _staring_ at each other. Ushio’s hands are now at her sides and Zoro has gotten close to her, less than a foot of space between them. Nami bites back the urge to screech a crow of victory in the air.

Usopp face sours but he backtracks nonetheless.

“A-Ah, yes. I do recall...” She slams the door behind them with a surge of victory.

Half the time, Ushio thinks Zoro doesn’t like her. As she watches his brow furrow as he stares down at her, she can’t really say she blames him.

She’s secretive, says weird cryptic things, and she often ignores what he says. He knows she has the power, had the power, to fight that clown man off and rescue Luffy. Yet she did nothing.

It’s only that, there are other times where shet thinks he might just...

“Ushio…” Her name rumbling out of his chest draws her attention and she watches him watch her. Zoro stares for a moment before the tension floods out of his body with a sigh.

“What was that? Back in the square...They?” He asks. The questions barely ask anything at all and she still grimaces. His eyes dart around her face, making sure he’s not going to miss anything in response to his questions.

“I think you may have misheard-” She tries.

“I didn’t and you know it.” He cuts her off immediately and Ushio glares at him. He glares right back.

“You can’t keep asking me questions you’re not ready to hear the answers to.” Her accent gets thicker and she bites down on the frustration she feels. She knows why Zoro is acting like this. She knows how this _looks_.

“What does that even mean?!” He shouts, one of his hands reaching to clench around the hilt of his sword. She tenses. “If you don’t tell me who They are-”

Reaching up, she cuts him off by grabbing hold of his nose. He makes a squawking noise as he’s forced to hunch down, hands quickly leaving the hilt to tug her hand off but she holds firm. He stares at her incredulously and she pokes his forehead with her other hand hard enough to make him flinch.

“Listen, my mama use to do this to Usopp and me when we would get ‘ta fussing about who really got the last piece of candy.” Ushio rambles, ignoring Zoro’s yelp when she tightens her fingers. His breath caresses her face and she ignores the heat that follows it.

“Zoro.” He stops fighting her hold. Ushio makes sure to look him dead in the eye as she speaks.

“I don’t work for anyone.” She watches his mouth open and quickly him cuts off. “**Listen**, I don’t. I think you know I don’t but you’re trying to find answers to questions that you don’t know how to ask.”

She lets go of his nose and he, straightening up, draws in a deep breath through his nose. She feels the pull of the air as it flows into his body, she feels the air all around them, and she closes her eyes.

“The wind, the air. It speaks, Zoro.” She doesn’t give herself time to stumble over the words. She lets them fall out of her mouth, the same way she confessed to her mother all those years ago when she was smaller and full of pain.

“It speaks to everyone but I think I’m one of the few who can hear it.” She opens her eyes and Zoro’s dark gaze, wide with surprise and something else, gives her the strength to finish.

“It tells me things. All sorts of things, sometimes too much. Tells me when I should do certain things, or when something needs to happen a certain way. It’s not loud…just a soft buzz that only gets louder when you try to listen to it. Yesterday it was….” She peters out, remembering how she couldn’t even _hear_ Zoro speaking to her. How she couldn’t hear anything but Luffy and the Voice.

“Loud?” Zoro asks, hunching forward again and eyes are darting all over her face as if searching for something.

“Yes.”

“What did it say?”

“Hmm?”

“What did it say back there? What did it tell you to do?” She blinks up at him and he stares back at her with an unreadable expression on his face. She lets her gaze stray to the furrow between his brows before she meets his dark gaze again. Chest warm with something she can’t name, she speaks.

“It told me to listen.”

The words linger between the two of them in a strange silence and she takes the opportunity to reach out and smooth the line between his brows. He leans back out of her face and swats her hand away. She draws back with a smile that she catches his eyes darting to.

“Does Luffy…..” His question trails off and she can’t help the small laugh that escapes her. Zoro is still peering down at her closely, but his lips twitch up into a smirk like he knows what she’s about to say.

“Yea, he does.” She thinks about that time that Luffy leaned over her and the wind quieted completely, his face in shadow but his grin bright and gleaming.

“Zoro! Ushio!” A rubber arm wraps around her waist first before the rest of the boy catches up. Luffy flings himself into the small space between the two of them, facing Ushio.

“You guys are matching!” Luffy’s fingers dances from her hip, up her back, and she ducks away when he goes to tug on her ear. His stretched arm tugs her back and he pouts at her laugh.

“Maybe you should get one too, little King.” She says, reaching up to tug on his ear in retaliation. Luffy laughs, his fingers playing with the small beaded gold hoops that hug the helix of her right ear.

“Trying to copy me now?” The words are spoken directly in her ear and she tilts her head to see him at corner of her eyes. Zoro is still smirking at her, pressed close to her and Luffy, and she’s answering his smirk with a grin before she can stop it.

The slamming of a door draws all of their attention and they all turn to see Sanji, Nami, and Usopp staring back at them, clustered around the door. She catches her brother’s eyes immediately and breaks away from Luffy and Zoro. She makes her way towards the door and, with a soft tug on her shirt that makes their shoulders knock together gently, Usopp meets her in the middle. Like he always does.

“Dinner’s ready!”

Crocus thought the girl was a bit strange. The way she ran soothing hands down Laboon’s scars that she could reach, brown hands tiny against that massive whale. The way the only time he had heard her speak was when she spoke to Laboon in a soothing tongue that Cronus hadn’t heard in...quite some time.

Crocus is curious.

“You and that boy are twins, aren’t ya? Where in the Blues are you from?” Crocus watches the girl closely. She doesn’t tense when he speaks, even though he’s sure he didn’t make a sound when approaching her. Instead, she pauses in nailing a new board on the bow and glances at him over her shoulder, dark eyes hooded and lazy.

She stares and the question hangs in the air long enough for the silence to turn awkward. She blinks once, slow like a cat interrupted in its sun dozing, and turns back to her nailing.

Crocus decides right then and there that he hates teenagers with a passion.

“Respect your elders, _gaki_-”

The navigator’s scream draws both of their attention. Crocus makes his way past the little slip of a girl with an annoyed huff. He ignores the smile he sees dancing across full lips.

“Syrup Village in East Blue.” He pauses. Her voice is warmed by her amusement and a faint accent that Crocus _knows_ isn’t from anywhere in East Blue.

“And what you were speaking to Laboon?” This time, she tenses. Cronus lingers at her back, curiosity heightening at the way her hand grips the handle of the hammer tightly, just for a moment, before it relaxes. She looks at him again, those dark eyes hooded with something Crocus can’t put a finger to. Something that reminds him of how young these children are.

How young_ they __all_ were, even back then.

“A dead language.”

Miss Wednesday didn’t think much of the pirates that were helping them. The crew was a little...weird, with the fickle boy in a straw hat who laughs at the violently changing weather, the girl who’s eyes gleamed when they mentioned how well they would pay the pirates, and the lying boy with the long-nose and shaky knees.

The sleeping swordsman and staring cook only adding to their strange dynamic. Their names don’t matter, not in the grand scheme of things, since once they reach Whiskey Peak...

A sharp gale makes Miss Wednesday twitch violently, almost letting go the rope between her hands. She darts her gaze to the side to follow through on the navigator’s instructions, only to see dark eyes staring at her from a blank face.

The hooded gaze causes her to freeze in place, the rope dangling uselessly in her hands. The girl is slouched less than a foot away from her with her white dress fluttering lightly around her thighs as if dancing in a small breeze, not this wild storm around them. A chill that has nothing to do with the storm causes goosebumps to rise across her skin. 

The girl’s eyes narrow and Vivi suddenly feels she’s out of breath, her own breathing feels, sounds louder than the gales around them. That dark gaze makes her light-headed, a faint buzzing underneath her skin that makes her regret every stepping foot on this ship.

With a jolt and stars dancing in her vision, she suddenly remembers this is the one they called....

“Ushio!” The navigator’s shout is heard over the harsh winds and, with a blink, Ushio straightens up. Vivi sucks in a ragged breath that rattles in her chest like the snakes of her homeland. She fights to hold the girl’s lingering gaze, the rain cold against her skin and her hands burning from her grip around the rope. With a slow, lazy blink, the girl turns away to follow the shout of her nakama.

Miss Wednesday eyes' watches the back of her white dress and Vivi’s hands tremble around the rope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll be honest, i did NOT expect such a positive response from the last chapter! most commented chapter by far and you guys made me tear up omg. the way you guys talk about Ushio just makes me so, so happy. She's my baby and I'm glad you guys like her too. also yall give me ideas and it makes me want to pick apart you brains. with love, of course. but seriously, you guys are incredible and i have much love for you. okay okay i'll stop being a sap.
> 
> anywho, i'm currently doing some editing on how the chapters were formatted before with their weird double spacing. that was my bad and im fixing it. from now on, there will hopefully only be intentionally double spacing. hmm the last chapter was mostly about the ending to an arc, and now's we got the BEGINNING OF A BIG ARC, mixed with fluffy straw hat times and 'strange, little thing" Ushio. ill be honest i'm hyped for the alabasta arc for a LOT of different reasons....i mean we get to meet my boi and that's all i'm gonna say about that. i lingered on this chapter alot because introducing an arc is hard and the kind of pacing i want, while trying to write certain events makes me hesitate with writing longer chapters BUT i thought i would end the year with an update!! so i hope you guys enjoy this and, as always, let me know what you think! 
> 
> i AM curious about something though. Do you guys ship Ushio with anyone? And if so...who? *eyes emoji*


	9. Chapter 9

The slamming of a plate in front of her draws Ushio’s attention away from a drink spilling from Nami’s lip. In front of her is a heaping pile of some kind of bun with the sweet smell of cinnamon wafting from it. She can’t help but lean in closer and she can see white frosting glistening on top. She has never seen anything like it.

“One of your friends told me you liked...sweets. Cinnamon rolls with our specialty whiskey frosting.” The voice sounds at her ear, husky like smoke, and Ushio drags her gaze away from the treats to the boy settling down next to her. The boy is handsome, in a conventional way, and he is holding out one of the treats as if she’s going to take a bite from his palm.

Ushio, full tankard in hand, allows a slow smirk to spread across her mouth. Glad she had taken her hair down before they docked, she uses the opportunity to brush her curls back, exposing her neck and bare shoulder. The way his eyes dart to her neck and the resulting blush that spreads across pale cheeks is a nice reward.

“Well...I do like whiskey.” She purrs out, having never had a drop of alcohol before in both her lives. Her eyes see an easy target and she has had the ability to spot opportunities beaten into her. These...hunters masquerading as villagers are amusing her.

She leans in closer, peeking up at the boy under her lashes and she watches the boy visibly gather himself. He starts to stutter out some reply she doesn’t bother listening to and she manages to catch Nami’s eyes. Her brown eyes are dancing in amusement in a way that turns Ushio’s smirk into a grin. Nami’s attention turns back to the nun and Ushio watches the way Nami’s throat swallows for a second too long before a hand resting on her bare shoulder draws her attention.

She straightens and it brings her face inches away from this boy. She makes sure to blink up at him nice and slow and allows her eyes to trace his tongue wetting his lips.

“A-ah, try one! I think you would like-” Ushio knows they are putting something in the food and drinks. Just like she knows they are all being hunted. Future knowledge withstanding, what kind of place openly welcomes pirates in such a grand gesture. With their false smiles and lying eyes.

Ushio copies them.

She cuts the boy off mid-sentence by taking a bite of the treat in his hand, catching the dripping frosting with the tip of her tongue. The flavor explodes pleasantly in her mouth and she can’t help the hum of pleasure as the buttery cinnamon dances across her tongue. The smoky taste of what she thinks is the whiskey complements the sweetness in a way she’s never had before. The tanginess of whatever drug they put in it doesn’t take away from the taste at all.

She brings a hand to her mouth to catch any stray frosting and draws the tip of her finger into her mouth, exaggerating her swallow just a _tad_. Opening eyes she didn’t realize she closed, she realizes that most of the people surrounding her at the bar are quiet.

The boy is gaping at her and the rest of them are frozen with tankards midway to their mouth, peaking at her from the corner of their eyes. She blinks back at them.

“Ushio! I want some!” Luffy’s voice cuts through the silence and Ushio feels Luffy’s arms circling around her, reaching. His cheek brushes against her own and he reaches for the plate of treats still steaming in front of her. Ushio sighs as all of the nice, drugged treats vanishes in front of her and this time she manages to catch Zoro’s eye from across the tavern.

He is mid-laughter, loud and boisterous in a way that she wishes was real. He has empty tankards all around him and, when their eyes meet, his stare is intense as ever even as he lifts his tankard towards her as if to toast. She lifts hers in answer, allowing a small smirk to slip through.

It is going to be a long night.

“It’s just a single swordsman.”

“Phew...”

Zoro’s back hits the wall with a thud as thoughts circle around in his head at a rapid pace. That’s when he hears the faint chime. His head turns and their faces are mere inches apart, far enough that he can see the wide grin on her face. She’s saying something without speaking, her eyes gleaming like the night sky above them. She leans closer and their foreheads knock gently together, breaths mingling, and then she’s gone.

“Does he seriously think that he can fight all of us by himself?”

Zoro, mind clear, couldn’t help the bloodthirsty grin spreading across his face.

The gun clicks, Zoro bends backwards, and Ushio is there in front of him, kicking the explosion back with a blast of air. The explosion rocks the hunters off the roof and they both hear their bones crack with the impact.

The child in front of her lifts a gun and she’s there, holding the gun between her hands. The child flinches and she sweeps his feet out from under him. Grimacing as she spins on her heel, she kicks at air and the kid rockets across the roof, crashing into the nun in a tangle of limbs.

Zoro jumps down to another roof, crashes announcing his progress, until she feels a rough breath draw into his lungs as he dodges. Ducking under the swing of a sword, she grabs the man’s wrists, breaking it with a twist of her hand. She stays long enough to cut off his scream by slamming him face first into the ground before she follows the breath in Zoro’s lungs.

She inhales and the slam of Miss Monday’s fist against Zoro’s face has Ushio gritting her teeth in anger. She rushes into the smoke and Zoro is there, hand clutched around the woman’s face. The look on his face makes her pause, heart stuttering in her chest.

“What’s the matter, muscle woman? Didn’t you want a contest of strength?” The crack of his fist nearly closing on the woman’s face fills Ushio with an adrenaline rush so heady, she feels her face flush.

Blood dripping down his face, Zoro makes eye contact with her as he speaks.

“Shall we continue, Baroque Works?”

“Don’t compare me to you!”

Ushio sighs as Luffy’s laughter and Zoro’s shouting draws Nami’s ire. She watches Princess Vivi, the slump of her shoulders and the downturn line of her lips. She watches the way this girl carries the weight of a nation on her shoulder.

“You saw how strong these guys are.” Nami speaks and Vivi makes eye contact with Ushio. Ushio stares back, sitting atop a crate behind Zoro. Vivi’s eyes gleam with a fire that’s burning with pure anger, righteous anger on behalf of her people, even as she refuses their help.

“Who’s the boss?” Luffy’s question sounds thoughtless in the open air, but Ushio knows. Zoro knows. Nami knows. Vivi visibly panics at the question and Ushio closes her eyes while the night air swirls around them.

“As strong as you people may be, you’d never stand a chance against one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Crocodile!”

“Who, now?”

The flap of the Unluckies wings heralds their fate. She feels herself drifting in and out of the conversation that follows, only the weight of Zoro leaning against her crossed legs keeping her there. Whispers tickle at her ears and she opens her eyes only to see Luffy staring right back at her. His grin stretches his lips wide and his eyes dance in answer to the call of a good fight.

“Guess that means all four of us are on the Baroque Works’ hit list now”

“That’s exciting for some reason!”

Ushio waits and waits, tracing the path of the moon in the sky as the conversations flow all around her. She’s trying to remember the next events, while the air around her whispers quietly in her ear. Vivi said Crocodile’s name and she realizes with a jolt that she wouldn’t have known his name otherwise. She remembers that this fight, this part of the journey is important. A strange sensation begins to build up in her chest as she scrambles to remember who they’re going to meet. Who’s important. Who matters.

A hand on her back guides her towards the cliffsand she sneaks a glance at Vivi, whose gaze never leaves the boat drifting away. Ushio gives her attention to the boat, trying desperately to even think of _names_, when something changes. Ushio flinches as a whisper breaks an eerie silence.

_The Lost Child._

Ushio slips into the air current and pushes, knocking the air pressure from the explosion off course. The rush of air never hits them but it doesn’t stop the blaze of the fire lighting up the night. Something else…something heavy weights the air down while the fire blazes. Slipping out of the air and touching down on the edge of the cliff, Ushio finds herself facing Vivi. The girl’s face is blank, fist clenching at her sides and blood dripping from a bitten lip. Ushio hears Luffy and Zoro shouting orders. She hears Nami comforting a girl who doesn’t even have time to grieve.

“Baroque Works!? Crocodile!?! HA! The Seven Warlords are nothing at all!”

Ushio feels the path before them getting darker.

“I have no reason to fight.” She says just as Monkey D. Luffy’s hat bounces up to her in an easy hop of air straight into her hand and a hand closes around her wrist. Miss All Sunday feels her eyes go wide and an ugly, sharp gasp leaves her mouth as a girl appears in her face in between one blink and the next.

A soft hand closes gently around her throat while a soft breath, sweet with cinnamon, caresses her face. Dark eyes stare up at her from a face surrounded with bouncing, tangled curls. Thighs on either side of her hips on the ledge, the girl straddles her weightlessly.

The girl leans closer and Miss All Sunday realizes she can’t draw a breath in. She fights to keep her calm facade as hands sprout from the girl’s back to wrap around her throat, but they slide through harmlessly. The girl blinks down at her as she fights to draw a breath in.

“No reason to fight, you say?” The girl’s eyes laugh at her for a reason she can’t comprehend. “State your business, Miss All Sunday.”

The girl says her name like it’s a question, dark eyes gleaming with something she can’t understand. Miss All Sunday crushes down her instinctive curiosity and smiles. The girl’s blank face blooms into an answering smirk that does nothing for those cold, dark eyes, just as she _allows_ her to take a breath.

Miss All Sunday feels like she’s drawing it in directly from the girl’s smirking mouth.

“You’ll die if you go through that course.” She rasps, “Skip Little Garden.” Her wrist is released and nimble fingers take the Eternal Pose and throws it behind them directly into the princess’ hands.

“She’s a good person?” The navigator’s voice cuts through the silence after her words and the hand against her throat twitches.

“It’s a trap, isn’t it?’

“Is it now?” Miss All Sunday murmurs the words into the girl’s face and watches those dark eyes gleam.

“S-Shio! Get down from there! What are you doing!?” The girl on top of her throws a look over her shoulder and Miss All Sunday takes the moment to examine her. The girl on top of her is small with a riot of curls that hang down her back, tiny beads gleaming through the strands and her brown skin in the morning light.

The crack of the Eternal Pose pulls Miss All Sunday from her examination and the girl vanishes from on top of her between one blink and the next. She looks down and the girl is standing there beside her Monkey D. Luffy. Face blank, eyes dark.

“Who cares about that? You’re not the one who decides the course of this ship!”

He remembers the times when their mother would join them in building a blanket fort. He remembers after they tired out from laughter and pillow fights, their mother would gather them close, pressing their faces into her collarbones. He remembers always trying to make sure he stayed up, with some childish wish to stay up longer than his sister.

Ushio always won. Ushio, with those gleaming dark eyes, would rest tiny hands on their necks like she was trying to trace every breath they took. Even when they eventually wake up, she was watching. Hands resting on either their chest or their necks, eyes riveted like she could watch them sleep forever.

The rest of the crew declares their dreams for the entire world to hear. Ushio keeps her own dream locked behind those watching eyes. Usopp thinks he’s probably the only one privy to what his sister wants more than anything else in this world. Why her dreams are never shouted in the air that becks at her call.

Ushio’s dream began when those tiny hands clung to their necks, tracing the ups and downs of their breathing chest.

Nami gets sick and Usopp has to bite down the memories of the last time he has seen someone ill. He tucks the memories into the folds of his bandanna and watches his sister fight for her dream.

Usopp watches the way Ushio stays at Nami’s side, ignoring the racking coughs and the smell of sick in the air. He watches brown hands change the rag on a burning forehead patiently. He watches brown hands try to coax Nami into eating. He watches those hands tremble as they straighten Nami’s blankets and remember when those same hands were tiny and unsure, tracing the air in her family’s lungs.

When Vivi announces that they can only go to Alabasta with a healthy Nami, Usopp watches the way his sister’s eyes never waver from the rise and fall of Nami’s chest.

A crash on the deck draws all of their attention above them.

“That’s far enough, pirates!” Vivi jumps at the shout. She looks up and there are people surrounding them at all sides, huddled together in their winter gear. All kinds of weapons are pointing straight down at them and Vivi’s heart sinks.

“Attention, pirates! Leave this place at once! This instant!” One of the villagers shouts out at them, a gun held firm in his grip. Vivi tries to discern the look in his eyes, but only sees anger.

“We came to find a doctor!” Vivi shouts back.

“We have a sick person on board!” Luffy yells after her when her words are met with charged silence.

“We won’t fall for that trick, you filthy pirates!”

“This is our island! We won’t let any pirates land here!”

“Rise anchor and leave now! Or else we’ll blow your whole ship up.” All of the shouts sound the same to her. Angry and stubborn. Spoken with pain that only comes from experience. Sanji makes a thoughtful noise that feels the silence after the villagers’ words before he speaks.

“They really hate our guts. And we’ve just met, too...”

“Don’t talk back!” The shout cuts off Sanji’s words and a gun shot rings through the air. The atmosphere plummets further but Vivi can see the gun trembling in the villager’s hand.

“You didn’t just do that!” Sanji makes to move forward and Vivi moves before she can think.

“Sanji-san, don’t!” Turning her back to the villagers, she tries to hold Sanji back. He fights against her for only a moment when Vivi and Sanji are pushed back suddenly and violently. They trip over each other just as a second shot rings out.

“Shio!” Usopp’s choked gasp announces her presence.

Untangling herself from Sanji, Vivi looks and she sees Ushio. Ushio is standing there, between them and the villagers, with a single hand raised towards where Vivi and Sanji had been standing. There’s another hole in the deck from a bullet and Ushio is staring down at that hole with an unreadable expression.

Ushio brushes her curls away from her face with a loud sigh that fills the silence and directs her gaze towards the villagers. The villagers raise their guns and Luffy makes an awful noise behind gritted teeth before he starts to charge forward. Vivi jumps forward with a shout.

“No! Stop! Th-This fighting isn’t necessary!”

“We won’t land.” Ushio speaks suddenly and Luffy stills in Vivi’s grip. Ushio is standing there, in a brown hooded coat that matches Usopp’s, her curls swaying in the still winter air. Her gaze is still on the villagers but one of her hands is resting on Luffy’s shoulder.

“We won’t land. We won’t leave this ship but our nakama...she is very ill.” Ushio’s words aren’t loud, but they resonate all around them, echoing. For some reason, Vivi can’t help but think of the way Ushio has been taking care of Nami. The way that blank face of hers wavers every time Nami coughs. Or the way her brows has been furrowed every since Nami had collapsed after Little Garden. The way her hands shake when they rest on the rise and fall of Nami’s chest.

Vivi thinks back to the girl that stared her down in the middle of a thunderstorm. The girl who had looked like she would never plead for anything or for anyone and wonders.

Vivi jolts out of her trance when she sees Ushio start to bend at the waist. Black tangled curls brush against the deck as Ushio bends into a perfect bow. Her face is hidden behind the curtain of her hair and Vivi sees some of the guns pointed at them lowering. A cracking noise draws her attention to her right.

Luffy...Luffy is _staring_ at Ushio with the most unreadable expression on his face. His hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides, his jaw is tight with tension, and his eyes are fixated on Ushio as she supplicates to the villagers.

“We won’t land, so please...” Ushio’s voice cracks and Vivi wishes more than anything at this moment that she could see her face.

“Please just get us a doctor.” There’s a strange silence that falls over everyone after her plea is done. Vivi, feeling strangely like she’s in a fog, starts to bend at the waist.

“Please-” She tries to speak but Luffy suddenly bows next to her, arms straight at his sides with his hands loose at his sides.

“Help us save our nakama!”

Luffy’s straw hot rolls to a stop and Vivi folds into a neat bow.

Her memories are failing her. Loguetown taught her that. She remembers being hunched, reading in the dark, and sharing words with Big Sister about the story. It’s just that…names are slipping through her fingers and she’s barely remembering faces. She remembers Luffy’s crew. Her crew. She remembers…some parts of Alabasta. Miss All Sunday is...a crew member. She thinks she recognizes that plastic smile with those blank, observing blue eyes. She _thinks_.

Ushio thinks there is always going to be moments where she questions if she has made the right decision in altering this story. With her failing memories, the only thing that guides her is the air around her. There are moments where Ushio will go to do something, listening to the whispering voices in her ears, and realize with a jolt that she knows what happens next, and that she can change it.

As the roaring sound of the snow falling down reaches her ears along with Sanji and Luffy’s panicked shouts, she thinks that this is one of those moments.

The last of the Lapin duck away and Ushio is suddenly hit with a wave of rage. She feels the fear that has been creeping at the back of her mind come to a head as the avalanche rushes towards them.

Ushio doesn’t care to sit and _deal _with this. She wants to save Nami. Nami who is strapped to Luffy’s back securely, eyes closed and face red with a radiating heat.

Not for the first time, Ushio wishes she can take her nakama with her when she travels on the wind. If she could, then Nami wouldn’t have to _deal_ with being in the blistering cold while fighting for each ragged breath. Luffy wouldn’t be going_ numb,_ ducking around these creatures while fighting to save his nakama. They wouldn’t have to _clim__b _this damned mountain trying to get to some witch because she’s the only damn doctor on this side of the island.

With the sound of snow screaming in her ears, Ushio sucks in a deep breath and closes her eyes. She feels the air around them, ignoring the way her fingers are vanishing at the tips, and reaches her senses out.

“Ushio! _**Ushio!**_”

“We need to find higher ground!”

There are hands tugging at her coat, trying to pull her away, and she holds steady as the air around her comes back with answers. Where the avalanche is headed. How many people are around. How much she’s about to change.

She ignores the warnings and opens her eyes. She tugs away from the hold of the hands dragging her and slips forward on the air to come to a stop beside them. Sanji and Luffy turn, faces incredulous and panicked until both of their gazes land of her. Sanji’s eyes widen and Luffy’s mouth parts but she chances one more glance at Nami’s burning face and comes to a decision.

With a deep exhale that leaks into the air around them, Ushio takes a single step forward and, with an arm unraveling into the air, reaches out.

They are running, with the village rushing all around them, when there’s a loud, muted crack. Some of the villagers stumble around him, tripping over each other in the wake of the sudden noise rippling through the air. The sound was different than the roaring rush of the snow coming towards them.

With a strange feeling curling up his spine, Usopp turns to look back at the avalanche falling towards them, except….he doesn’t see anything. Can’t see anything but clouds.

The rushing clouds of tumbling snow is rising, up and up into the air like the pillowing smoke from a fire. The harsh, muted cracking noise continues as the snow beats against something Usopp can’t see. Something that is blocking the snow from...everyone.

The clouds of powdered snow starts to fall, rolling over top the villagers, above their homes as if rolling across a dome of _air_.

That strange feeling settles at the base of his skull. Another crack sounds across the silence that has settled over the village and Usopp, with a sudden jolt, realizes that his hands are trembling.

“Wh-what’s happening?” A villager says over the cracking. No one is moving, something in the air settling over them and freezing them in place. A familiar something. Something that Usopp knows better than himself. It’s only then that Usopp recognizes the feeling coursing through his body.

Dread settles into its familiar place in his bones as Usopp watches his sister bleed into the air all around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah.........lol. hmmmmmmm. yup. i've been....marinading on this chapter....first i gave you guys all feel good straw hat times. get ready for the pain train. please let me know what you guys think! i'll be reread and obsessing, making minor changes as i find grammatical and spelling mistakes, so i def apologize if something sounds dumb.
> 
> anywho, thank you guys so much for your kind words on the previous chapters! you guys are so incredible and i really, really appreciate the support. lol you guys are so full of ship ideas!!!!!! and a lot of them were VERY interesting. i think i've confirmed this already but anyway there is A SHIP. liked definite ship lol this ship has been planned since the very beginning which....i don't think will change but i can't say yall didn't tempt me 👀 
> 
> DISCLAIMER THO. any recognized quotes are most definitely from the anime and/or manga! so don't sue me, oda-sensei. LISTEN OKAY i don’t know if whiskey peak actually had anything to do with whiskey but this is my fic and YUP. yall enjoy this chapter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


	10. Chapter 10

Luffy loves all of his nakama. Nami is loud but he likes the way her eyes gleam whenever she draws her maps or when she’s counting money. Usopp is a scaredy-cat but he likes the way Usopp swings his hands around when he lies. Sanji hits him a lot but he absolutely _loves_ his food. Zoro is stupid but he likes to hear his laugh when they’re making fun of Usopp together.

Ushio is...

She is quiet where Luffy is use to all kinds of noise. When she talks, she has a funny accent that Luffy misses the moment she stops. Luffy thinks that Makino has the most beautiful hair in the world and he _still _does. He just really likes Ushio’s hair too. Her hair is soft, curls around his fingers, and he likes the way it always dances around her face whenever she moves. Luffy likes that Ushio doesn’t mind it when he wraps himself all around her. Luffy likes the way Ushio’s eyes look whenever she’s watching their nakama.

Most of all, Luffy likes to see Ushio smile. It reminds him of the summers in Dawn, where he slept between warm bodies underneath the stars. Where he ran through thick jungles and forest with laughter ringing all around him, steel pipes glinting in the sun.

She always has a smile for her crew, like she knows the power behind her smiles, and so Luffy basks in every single one.

Now, more than anything, Luffy wishes for Ushio’s smile as he remembers the way she ripped herself away from their grip. The way she scattered apart in the air, limbs vanishing like she was evaporating. The way she turned to look at them one more time before she disappeared before their eyes just before the avalanche curved around them.

She wasn’t smiling then.

Nami remembers some things when she was sick, like telling the crew to go ahead to Alabasta and voices arguing over top of her.

She remembers Ushio. Flickers of her dark, warm eyes staring at her. Her voice murmuring words Nami couldn’t understand through the haze of her fever, but they were comforting and warm. She remembers her gentle hands changing the rag on her forehead and resting gentle across her chest.

Nami wakes, fever broken, and sees this strange, timid talking reindeer. She sees an old woman who dresses like she’s 50 years younger. She sees a wrapped up Luffy and Sanji, who tell her how they got there.

She doesn’t see Ushio.

Usopp does his best to soothe Vivi’s worries and he dodges Zoro’s looks. He knows he looks a wreck because with every whisper of the avalanche that reaches his ears, Usopp flinches.

No one knows the source of the miracle that saved their little nook that they’ve carved for themselves in the wake of their tragedies. Usopp can’t help but think of what his sister may have sacrificed. What she may have lost trying to protect these people.

Protect him.

There’s a faint siren that is going off in the back of his mind and he tries to write it off as his normal paranoid tendencies. It’s just that...everything keeps working out but the hairs on the back of his neck keep rising.

Something is wrong. He knows something is wrong. He’s somewhere where he should not be. He needs to be with his sister. Should he call out to her? Would she hear him?

Would she answer?

Usopp opens his mouth to call but a cold breeze steals his breath. Shivering violently, he looks around and realizes that he’s lost track of time. Lost track of Vivi and Zoro. The villagers and the Isshi-20 are waiting around for the lift to be fixed so they can all make their way to the castle.

Usopp doesn’t know what to do.

A shout announces the fixed lift and the people flood around him. Usopp stands and looks around for Vivi when his sister’s work catches his eye. Ushio’s powers created a strange dome around them all with the way the avalanche forced to move around them. Swallowing down a bitterness in his chest, Usopp moves forward with everyone else towards the lift as freezing wild wind swirls around them

Usopp knows this wind, this air around them isn’t his sister anymore. It does not caress his face, ruffle through his hair, or play at his ears.

It bites and it nips and it cuts.

A tug on his sleeved draws Usopp from his thoughts and Vivi is next to him. He opens his mouth to question her sudden appearance when he sees her wide eyes and pointing finger, her pale lips mouthing a name.

Usopp follows the point of her finger and, with a sharp gasp that stings, calls out.

It’s cold.

The thought comes and Ushio flings into consciousness, eyes shooting open as her lungs fight her. Rolling over too quickly, Ushio chokes on a cough that clatters in her chest. The cough rips painfully through her throat and just doesn’t stop. Tears burn in her eyes as bile rises up from her stomach and burns her throat.

Ushio gags loudly as tears runs down her face, snow digging into her naked knees. The foul taste lingers in her mouth as violent shivers rack through her body. She uses trembling hands to pile snow on top of her mess. Another racking cough paints the snow red and she clenches cold snow in her fist as her body rages war.

Ushio tries to scramble her thoughts together, trying to recall the last time her powers has ever made her feel like this. Ushio always got the impression that when she uses her fruit, the air answers to her call. She only has to think and the air rushes up to meet her desires, brushing against her ears and fingers. She always thought of her and the air as one, the way she would flow in and out of its currents.

She watches snow melt from her flickering clenched fist, body aching. How can mere humans think they can tame nature with just a taste of death lingering on their tongues?

With only her gasps sounding in her ears, she keeps thinking of Usopp’s face the very first time she ate this fruit. The Devil’s Fruit. His wailing in the air and how she thought she could handle this power because it caused her brother so much pain.

Ushio was arrogant. Because she’s realizing that this time, this time is different. So different from the other times she’s used her fruit. Ushio was never in control. Ushio, a mere vessel, fearlessly dipped her hands into the overwhelming force of the air that circulate this island.

The wind, the air is only taking its due, Ushio thinks distantly, as she feels frigid air swirl around her exposed, sweaty skin. It is taking its due because Ushio isn’t _strong enough_. The air had spit her back out into being, its overwhelming pressure too much for her tiny bones.

Ushio is in...pain. So much pain. It reverberates through her bones in a way she has never felt before. It shifts beneath her skin rapidly and she can’t catch her breath without her lungs screaming at her. She wants to sink, settle in the cold snow and stay there. Escape this agony.

She inhales a deep breath, biting back a pained moan, and she strains to listen. She strains and strains while her lungs scream at her. She strains because she can’t afford to stay here. She refuses.

Even then...she hears nothing.

She exhales a shaky breath. She gathers snow in her hands and uses it to clean her face of her tears. She swallows deeply, desperately trying to wet a dry and burning throat. She pushes off trembling hands with a groan that cracks its way out of her mouth through gritted teeth.

How can she get stronger, she thinks as she gathers the strength to stand. She has to. For her _nakama_, she has to get stronger. Determination settles in her belly and Ushio finally has the strength to stand on weary feet.

Her knees buckle underneath her and, with pure exhaustion flooding her, blackness begins to edge into her vision. She stumbles and she feels hands catch her. She thinks she hears a call of her name as the hands cradle her arms firmly and tugs her close. Weak and slipping fully into the darkness, a breath caresses her face as she falls fully onto their chest.

It’s warm.

Chopper thinks this human smells strange. She smells like the one who called him a monster in the same way that fawn from the same herd tend to. There is just this other smell that clings to her, something that makes Chopper want to rub at his nose and smother his face into it.

Chopper tries not to worry but her crew keeps filtering in and out the room with furrowed brows that vanish the moment they catch him looking. Well, all of them except two.

Usopp did not bother hiding his worry, not from the moment she came in the room with Usopp nearly walking on top of Zoro, fists clenched at his sides so hard his knuckles were pale as he watched the swordsman lay her down on the bed. Usopp didn’t move from her bedside until she awoke, late in the night. He was the first one she saw when she opened her eyes and Chopper made himself scarce when the smell of tears filled the air just as their trembling hands tangled together.

He remembers shutting the door quietly behind him, listening to her murmuring to her brother.

Luffy never had furrowed brows but the moment he walks into the room, his eyes never leave her. When Dr. Kureha and Chopper are checking up on her the day after she wakes, Luffy grins while retelling his battle with Warpol, gesturing wildly. His voice is quiet and it creates a small bubble around them as Ushio smiles, violent tremors shaking the mug of hot tea in her hands.

Every time Chopper sees the two of them talking, the urge to join grows stronger and he worries more for this strange human who is supposed to be a part of Luffy’s crew. Who smells weird.

The smell is nice and weird. She’s weird and nice even though Chopper can see how much pain she’s in. In her sleep, when she sleeps at all, she fights for every breath like the air keeps slipping through her grasp. She’s always shivering, despite the warmth of the fire filling the entire room.

She needed rest. All she needed was rest. There’s nothing blocking her airways and it was as if all of her muscles were straining from overuse. Almost like she’d been stretched thin before being snapped back into place.

“You can’t half ass those powers, girlie. Not with that particular fruit or it will kill you.” Dr. Kureha rasps the words with a weariness Chopper hasn’t heard before. Ushio jolts at the words visibly, her eyes widen, and Chopper makes a soft noise that draws her attention from Dr. Kureha to him.

It makes Chopper realize that it’s the first time she’s ever had her full attention on him and Chopper freezes. Her eyes are dark, fathomless and having the full force of them land on him makes him nervous. Chopper can’t help the way he clings to Dr. Kureha’s leg with trembling hooves. Ushio’s face falls into a contemplative frown, eyes darting back to Dr. Kureha.

“What do you mean, half-ass?” Ushio mutters, eyes narrowing. “When I did research on the fruit-”

“I mean,” Dr. Kureha smirks at the face Ushio makes when she’s interrupted. “These fruit...they’re called the Devil’s Fruit for a reason.”

“I **know** this,” Ushio growls out but Dr. Kureha steam rolls over her with the patience of a bull.

“Do you? Because whatever you were before you ate it, before you used it days ago...it isn’t enough. You’re dipping into something unnatural so you have to become something unnatural in order to control them.”

Dr. Kureha stops, her eyes flashing briefly as she watches Ushio’s face. Chopper sees Ushio’s trembling hands clenching the blanket in her lap as Dr. Kureha opens her mouth to speak again.

“Don’t let it take you. Don’t let it ride your body this hard. It’s yours, isn’t it?”

The question hangs stagnant in the air and Chopper watches Ushio blink up at Dr. Kureha with an open mouth, eyes gleaming in the firelight with something like shock.

Chopper can relate.

“Anyways,” Dr. Kureha turns away from to pull out some old weathered notes that Chopper doesn’t recognize.

“I think I may be able to help you with that, girlie.”

Zoro thinks about how she looked when he found her. He had been looking around for stranglers after the avalanche with some of the other villagers, _not lost, damnit_, when he heard her. Heard her gasping breaths and wreching before he saw her. Hair plastered to her skull with sweat, curls limp. Blood in the snow in front of her and her limbs shaking hard as she struggled to her feet. She stumbled and Zoro found himself suddenly there fast enough to catch her fall, with Usopp’s shout ringing in his ears.

By the time he was able to pull her close enough to see her face, her eyes were closed, breath shallow, and her brows furrowed in pain.

It was far different from how he was seeing her now.

Sakura colored snow is beautiful, he thinks distantly, watching the pink lights play across her dark eyes and curling hair. She’s dressed more heavily than usual. Thick tights and a baggy turtleneck sweater hangs around her knees. Her brown furred jacket is open, to his annoyance, and he’s reaching to close it before he realizes.

She blinks up at him, the pink making her face soft. He’s close enough that he can make out faint beauty marks around the bottom of her eyes and he ignores the weird feeling swirling in the bottom of his stomach.

“You’re already not well, dumbass. Close your jacket.” He means for the words to sound like a reprimand but they come out fond. He finds he doesn’t regret it when a small smile blossoms across her face as she tucks some of her curls back behind the ear with the gold hoops. The smile is a real one of happiness, not the one she’s been wearing to reassure everyone.

The feeling gets worse.

“Thank you...Zoro.” Ushio mumbles the words into the small pocket of air between him and her, her eyes never wavering from his. Zoro knows she’s thanking him for more than just closing her jacket. His eyes dart around her face in a way that he is realizing he’s prone to doing before he smirks down at her.

“I can’t let you get worst, could I? The others would worry.” He murmurs, pulling his hands away from her coat. Ushio stares up at him for a moment, a long quiet moment, before her smile becomes something soft that makes his fingers tingle.

“I guess not.” She says around her smile. They are only able to share one more look before a shout draws their attention.

“IT’S PARTY TIME! USHIO, EAT THE SNOW WITH ME.” Luffy is already reaching towards her and Ushio laughs dances all around them as she calls back.

“I don’t think we can eat this snow, Little King!” Luffy snickers in answer as the rest of the crew starts preparing for their Sakura party. The others pulls them apart as a rubber arm stretches around Ushio’s neck, tugging her away, and Zoro dodges a team effort tackle from both Sanji and Usopp, the weird feeling laying forgotten at the pit of his stomach.

Hand slick with oil and gel, Ushio starts to braid a half crown around her head. Usopp stares at her blankly from the top of the piece of glass he’s holding for her. She meets his gaze evenly, hands working quickly.“You’re not even looking. Come on, Shio-”

“It’s hot, Sop-chan.” She says, holding a few bobby pins in her mouth. “I can’t have all this hair on the back of my neck. Now be a good otouto and hold the glass still.”

She ignores his huff as she tucks the last of the braid in place, allowing a much lesser weight of hair to hang down her back. The brush makes a soft sound that reminds her of her mama as it tugs through the rest of her curls. She feels a little weird, with no hair hanging around her face, as she tugs the rest of the curls to rest on either side of her shoulders.

Hands lightly touch the done braid and she looks up to see Sanji placing gold hair jewelry throughout her hair. She smiles and then laughs when Sanji, eyes wide, dramatically gasps in response.

“Shio-swan, please. Put that away before someone sees it. Only let me-”

“Oi! Shut up, ya stupid cook-”

“Stop tugging at your clothes, Shio.” Nami snaps, swatting her hands away from the hem of the barely there top. Ushio glowers back at her, crossing her arms underneath her chest, and Nami only smirks. Ushio’s outfit is very similar to Nami’s and she was enjoying her slight discomfort a little too much.

The reds, oranges, and yellows of her own outfit was beautiful, she would admit, as she warps the nearly sheer shawl around the top of her shoulders. It’s just…different.

A tug on her skirt draws her attention to Chopper who’s staring up at her with those big eyes of his. She places a gentle hand on his hat and he stuffs his face into the folds of her skirt.

“The smell…” His whine is very cute as he uses her skirt as a buffer. She looks up and makes deliberate eye-contact with Zoro. He sighs loudly and Nami rolls her eyes.

“All right, all right. Let’s get the rest of our supplies and look for Luffy.” Nami takes charge, hands on her hips. Chopper lets go of her skirt to dance over to Usopp to her amusement. The two boys start to chatter between them as they all make their way through the open market.

She’s enjoying the feeling of the sun on her face, bare arms, and bare feet. She lets the shawl slip further off her shoulders just to feel the warmth there as well, happy to no longer be shivering in a cold that no one else feels but her. Zoro is walking beside her, their shoulders bumping as the chatter of the others surrounds them. Her eyes dart around, looking for a straw hat when Zoro stops. She looks.

All she sees at first is the tattoo. It’s a purple cross with a bearded grinning face in the middle on a freckled back and she is suddenly hit with a waive of familiarity. She has…seen this mark before….on this same back….only…

For the first time since Drum, Ushio hears the faintest whisper. It’s muffled and she strains to listen, heart pounding in her chest as she tries to dig deeper into her memories of this story.

Zoro disappears from beside her suddenly, scaring her. She looks and sees him ducked behind some crates to the other’s confusion. She opens her mouth to speak when the whispers slides past her ear again.

She looks again and all she sees is this burly man carrying…men on his shoulders? The tall man is talking to a dark-haired woman with a sword and glasses. She takes a step forward to get a closer look when hands tugs her sharply towards the crates. She squats next to Chopper and listens to the other’s panic.

“Smoker? The marine from Loguetown!” Nami whispers.

“Don’t tell me he followed us all the way here!” Usopp’s whispered shout has Ushio’s head swiveling between all three of her panicking nakama. Marine in Loguetown?

“It would seem so. And that other guy...things could get ugly quick. Where is that idiot?” Zoro sighs, the words creating a heavy atmosphere between them all. Ushio allows the words to linger for only a moment before she makes confused eye-contact with Chopper.

“...Other...guy? Smoker?” She questions out loud. The three of them throw her incredulous looks before they’re all reaching to swat at her head. She laughs, ducking around their swinging hands.

“What do you mean, you idiot?!”

“Ushio, you were there!”

“Was I really?”

“He literally chased us nearly the entire time!”

“I’m no good with faces!” Her stomach growls loudly just as she ducks her brother’s last attempt at hitting her. She spins on a heel and starts to walk away, waving over her shoulder.

“Maa, maa. I’m gonna get some food.” She ignores their shouts as she ducks into the crowd, disappearing from view easily. She reaches out with nimble fingers, tugging a scarf off a stall without a second glance. She wraps it around her head, hiding her distinct hair as she heads in the direction of that boy with the orange hat.

There’s a crowd that she easily slips into in front of the restaurant. The people aren’t moving, just standing around, and it is easy to slither her way into the restaurant and listen to the conversations around her.

“He fell over in the middle of his conversation with the owner!”

“He’s a traveler.”

“We think he ate a Desert Strawberry.”

The murmurs are loud as she makes her way to the front of the crowd. He’s face-down in a full plate of food, with towering plates surrounding him on both sides. A fork in the air with a single piece a meat, she’s suddenly reminded of her captain.

He shoots up suddenly, mouth still full of food, and she can’t help the snort of amusement that escapes her as everyone around her screams. The crowd eventually clears out after realizing that man is alright and she takes a seat at the bar.

The owner makes eye-contact with her when she sits, but she waves him away, letting him speak to this man.

“Have you seen this guy? He’s a pirate with a straw hat...” The questions startles her and she whips her head around fast enough that it knocks the scarf back from her head. The owner and man turn to her just as a deep voice growls out heated words from the entrance of the restaurant.

It’s the man, the guy the others were worried about. He has two cigars dangling from his snarling mouth and Ushio is trying desperately to remember his name. Something to do with the cigars, right? Smugger? Smaug?

He’s speaking to the man near her, she realizes. She turns back towards the bar and takes the moment to study at his face. He has freckles on his face too, she realizes, along with shaggy black hair that brushes the tops of his shoulders. She sees the beaded necklace around his neck and a strange feeling curls up her spine.

“...Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates...”

Ushio is struck with where she recognizes this freckled man from. The last time she saw that necklace was when it broke across the air. The last time she saw his back was when a magma covered fist was punched through it. A trembling hand grips the bar tightly just as a choked gasp escapes her mouth.

This was Luffy’s...This man was…

“Ace...” The word escapes before she can stop it. Cigar Man and Ace both turn towards her at the sound. They all stare at each other for a moment and she sees the moment where Smugger starts to recognize her.

“Wait a second...” He chews at the end of one of the cigars thoughtfully with a raised eyebrow. Ace shifts around, back against a bar and leaning over the seat between the two of them. His eyes drag up and down her form shamelessly, clearly trying to see if he knew her.

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Why would he recognized some strange girl in a bar who knows his name?

Gunmetal gray eyes finally make their way to her face and she can only helplessly stare back as Ace’s lips twitch up into a grin that makes the freckles on his face dance.

“Do I know you, sweet heart?” He purrs out, that almost _practiced_ rogue grin glinting in the light.

“Gum Gum...Pistol!” Her scarf flutters off completely as her captain arrives with a bang.

Luffy’s limbs wraps around him in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time and Ace doesn’t try to bite down his wide grin. He allows his brother to drag him away and Luffy is snickering as he settles down beside him, leaning against Ace’s side like he’s touch-starved.

Ace can relate as his fingers find their way into his brother’s soft hair, rubbing roughly as he plays at being annoyed as wrapping an arm around his brother’s shoulders.

“Ushio is cool, right?” Luffy’s words are softly spoken for once and Ace, in a daze, realizes that he’s been kind of blatantly staring at her.

Ace has met a lot of people since traveling along the Grand Line and then the New World. Still…he knows he’s never met Ushio.

He would have remembered someone like her, even with just the way she holds herself. With her soft, bouncing curls tangling around her hips. Or the way her fingers tug at the hem of her top, finger tips brushing against the details. The way her wide eyes gleamed when they locked with his own in the bar. The way she shared that laugh, that smile with Luffy when they were escaping the marines.

It’s the same smile that dances on her lips now as she sits with her crew, trading the sheer shawl for the scarf Ace returned to her.

The navigator is next to her, gently leaning against her side and laughing while the long-nosed one shouts something at the cook. The reindeer is jumping around her feet, gesturing wildly in time with her brother’s shouts. The princess is peeking at the bundle of fabric while the cook keeps gesturing wildly at it. The green-haired swordsman is hovering over Ushio, just behind her shoulder, and he meets Ace’s gaze evenly.

Ace stares back as he allows his wide grin to become a smirk. A tug on his hand makes him look down and he sees his brother staring back up at him. Luffy’s grin stretches his cheeks wide, his eyes nearly closed with the force of his smile.

“You can’t have her.” Luffy declares, still grinning.

Ace blinks once, twice, before he bursts into loud peals of laughter. The laughter draws the crew’s attention to the two of them but he can’t stop the amusement that settles deeply in his chest. Luffy always had a way of making him feel good even when the world felt like it was against him.

“Ace, it isn’t funny! I mean it! She’s my nakama!” Luffy whines, trying to tug away from Ace’s tightening hold.

“Don’t worry about that.” Ace doesn’t hide his blatant disregard for Luffy’s words and Luffy fights harder in his hold.

“Hah?!”

“Listen, Luffy. There’s something I want you to have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOSH! I gave myself a personal deadline for this chapter and I'm proud of myself for meeting it. 
> 
> anywho lol yall did NOT enjoy that cliffhanger last chapter but it's all good in the neighborhood.....or is it? lol is ushio really as OP as we think??? has she suddenly become todoroki?!?! will we ever get another Sanji POV?!?!?! um anyway please enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think!!! i'll be doing my ususal reread until i die because no beta we die like men. I don't actually have much to say about this chapter, besides you guys might see me play with the tags a bit. we get to meet some people in this chapter, important people, and the start of something new ~ OH and i will say that there are no love triangles......despite the way certain things seem. 
> 
> OH I DO ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY. the scene with Dr. Kureha and Ushio is something that has to do with my own head canon when it comes to Drum Island........and that's all im gonna say about that.
> 
> um any recognized dialogue is from the anime/manga. please don't sue me. thank you very much and, once again, please enjoy the chapter!


	11. Chapter 11

Ushio can’t help the way she freezes when she hears the question.

Dr. Kureha and Chopper are staring at her, sitting in this bed, helplessly weak, and she clenches the blanket with trembling fingers. Dr. Kureha’s gaze darts to her hands at the sound of the blankets shifting before she turns to Chopper.

“Ne, go fetch the girl some water.” The words are more than just a command and Chopper reads the message between the words loud and clear.

“O-Of course.” The door shuts softly behind him and Dr. Kureha turns her attention back to Ushio and, eyes trained on Ushio’s trembling fists, Dr. Kureha begins to talk.

Dr. Kureha reveals she has done a lot of research on Devil’s Fruit in her past. She wants to use that research to help Ushio. Give her direction so she can understand the fruit she has eaten, making it part of herself instead of just_ using_ it, despite the fact that Dr. Kureha says that there is almost no records of her fruit.

Dr. Kureha explains things about Logia fruit that Ushio doesn’t remember from her past. Things about Lineage Factor, things about what it means to have her specific abilities, and things about what it means to awaken her fruit.

Dr. Kureha tells Ushio that Kūki Kūki no Mi is a fruit that hasn’t been found in a very, very long time. So long thatthere isn’t an entry on it in the Akuma no Mi Zukan. Only strange legends and myths of peoples’ manipulating the air around them, stopping natural disasters or causing them.

She says it took a very long time before someone connected the stories to an actual devil fruit and not just fantastical story-telling. She thanks Ushio for telling her its name. She repeats her question again.

“Ushio,” Dr. Kureha starts, her eyes are darting between Ushio’s hands and her carefully blank expression.

“How do you know the name of your fruit?”

Ushio stares back at her, trying to gather the words to explain The Voice of All Things. A Voice she knows she should not be able to hear.

This is not like that time when she told Zoro or her family. When it was almost _easy _to say because she knew she was safe, surrounded by people who would stand beside her no matter what she did.

Dr. Kureha is a stranger. A stranger who is helping her, but a stranger nonetheless. Her mother’s words are clear in her mind, the way her voice came out, unwavering and steadfast.

“_Baby, promise me you won’t mention this to anyone else? There are people out __there__…who fear this skill. People who would...hurt you for being able to hear it.”_

Dr. Kureha and Ushio stare at each other as Ushio tries to determine if it was _safe_ for her to answer the question. A strange type of fear quickly festers in the corners of her mind and she, very suddenly, wishes her brother was there. Sitting with her in this bed, with the blanket over top of their heads back when they were small with tiny brown feet tangled together.

She tries to imagine that kind of warmth as she comes to a decision, what is possibly the smartest decision, and speaks.

“T-There’s this….whispering. The air...it s-speaks.” She says the words softly, and directs her gaze to the blanket covering her. She watches the skin on her knuckles tighten as she continues. “My mama called it...The Voice.”

Papers hit the floor and a dip in the bed causes Ushio to look up sharply. Dr. Kureha is inches away from her, eyes wide and darting all over Ushio’s face.

“Voice?” The question is an abrupt contrast to Ushio’s words, loud and echoing. Ushio’s eyes narrow at her face and looks for something. Something like greed. She only finds open curiosity. It gives her the strength to nod, that fear leaving her as suddenly as it came. Dr. Kureha leans out of her space with a strange twist in the shape of her mouth. Her brows are furrowing and her eyes pinch at the corners in thought. She begins to pick up the papers she dropped.

“You’ve heard it since you ate the fruit?” Dr. Kureha questions as she shuffles the papers back together again. Ushio hums, watching Dr. Kureha’s hands. Unlike the rest of her, they’re wrinkled with calluses on the fingers that typically holds pens, bandages, andscalpels. They are hands that were meant to help, heal, soothe.

“Actually...nearly since I was born.”

The papers scatter across the floor.

The sound of his laughter is nice.

She watches his brown freckles dance across his cheeks. There is a warmth in the air around Ace that she wants to settle in, like a cat snoozing in the sun. Her eyes search for him, a tick that she usually associates with her own nakama. She wonders if it has something to do with their fruit, their elements calling out to each other.

Maybe it’s just Ace, with his wavy, dark hair and dancing freckles. His gray gaze that trail over her when he thinks she’s not looking.

She wonders if it is maybe that instinct, perhaps a whisper, that draws her attention to Ace at the moment when his laugh meets in the air while he hands Luffy the white piece of paper. She watches the way Ace’s mouth move around his words and she watches the way Luffy tugs on the paper in confusion. She watches the way Ace’s eyes crinkle at the corner as he smiles down at Luffy.

Her heart is stuttering in her chest, hammering loudly in her ears. Nami leans further into her side, drawing her attention to her nakama around her. The air around them is warm as they all watch their captain reunite fully with his brother. She is warm, finally warm, but her heart sounds like thunder and she can’t hear their laughs, can’t really process their smiles or Luffy’s happiness.

Because that white piece of paper that Luffy is tugging and playing with is important. She knows it. The air knows it. Ushio draws in the air around her, bringing it in through her nose, allowing it to flow through her as she listens to it.

_The shuffling of papers pause for only a second before she speaks again._

“_When you listen...when it speaks...Do you talk back?”_

Clenching her scarf in her tight grip, Ushio exhales a shaky breath. In that breath, she releases her questions and her worries.

“Having a dumb little brother...makes an older brother worry.” Usopp brushes against her back at the words and she waits. Waits for something to call back at her while she traces the soft smile on Ace’s face and the way his eyes close with it.

A pair of gunmetal gray eyes flick over to her and, this time, she meets his stare head on. She finally feels,_ hears _the air around her answer back just as Ace jumps down to his small boat. Ace is speaking up at them all, thanking them, and she’s scrambling to say something.

“He’s been calling himself ‘Blackbeard’ lately.”

“If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be back here in this part of the sea.”

“The next time we meet...will be at the Pirates’ Summit.” She hears the words and all she can think of is that fist punching through his chest and her captain screaming at the top of his lungs_._

_No. _

_Not yet._

The sound of his name is echoing along with the crackling of burning wood and the screams of the dying crewman.

Smirk dropping, Ace turns and he sees her as just a small speck beside Luffy. Her dark hair is fluttering behind her like ink from the heat wave of his Flame Fist and that bright white scarf is hanging over the rail of the ship from her tight grip.

He can’t see her mouth moving but he hears her somehow.

The rest of the crew are all around the pair of them, mingling and murmuring to each other softly as they all trek their way through the desert. She gleams the sweat lingering on their brows and swirls a soft breeze all around them.

Luffy’s laugh flutters out of his chest as he kicks at the sand that swirls with her breeze. Nami and Vivi flick grins over their shoulders as their coats flutter around them. Usopp throws a casual wave back at her, eyes on Chopper who makes a soft noise of surprise along with a giggle. Sanji releases a long drawn out relieved sigh that tells her all that she needs to know and Zoro…

Zoro’s gaze burns into the back of her head like it has been since she stopped Ace from leaving.

“You know me.” Ace murmurs the words down to her, his presence crowding around her with a warmth that has nothing to do with the sun beaming down at them. She feels caught in his gaze and, not for the first time, wishes she had not pulled her hair back from her face. Ushio ducks from his gaze, allowing the hood of her cloak to shadow her face and directs her gaze to the hills of sand in front of them.

“I do know you.” She says, peeking at him from the corner of her eye. Ace barely falters in his steps next to her, only noticed because she’s watching, and she swallows down her nerves. “You’re Luffy’s brother, aren’t you?”

Ace laughs, low and genuine, like she’s made a surprising joke. He tries to duck down to look at her face again and Ushio stubbornly looks forward.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Ace says, straightening up and somehow crowding even closer to her. Ushio feels a bead of sweat make its way down her neck and her shoulders hunch as Ace keeps getting _closer_.

“Tell me why I need to listen to you.” Ace’s voice drops in his seriousness and Ushio sighs, shoulders dropping from their hunched position. He shifts and her shoulder knocks against his bicep before he speaks again.

“Before...on the ship. You said that the path I was taking was dangerous. Very spooky.” Ace chuckles at the end in disbelief. “Listen, sweetheart, I’m a New World pirate-”

“I’m not going to act like I know what that means.” Ushio cuts him off, shaking her head softly. She turns to look at him fully and Ace gazes down at her with a frown, brow ticked up at her interruption.

“This is different and what you are now doesn’t really matter. I think...the man, Blackbeard, he is the beginning.” Ushio trails off as Ace reaches towards her face. She flinches and he freezes in place before retracting his hand.

“Beginning of what?” Ace murmurs, staring down into her shadowed face. Ushio stares back for only a moment and inhales a soft breath full of the heat. Feeling like an ant trap underneath a magnifying glass, Ushio turns towards her nakama. They have all made their way ahead of them during their conversation, even Zoro who manages to catch her in his sharp gaze. He doesn’t look at Ace, only at her. The moment their gazes meet, the line between his green brows smooths. He only lets his gaze linger for another second before Chopper wobbling at his feet draws his attention. Fighting back a soft smile at the way his eyes shimmer in concern, her gaze travels further until they see a straw hat on top of a grinning, laughing boy.

Ushio exhales softly through her nose, a cool sigh, as she answers.

“Of...change, I think.” Ushio says, watching Luffy try to steal more water from Sanji. His whines and laughter drains the rest of the tension out of her, her eyes tracing the lines around his grinning mouth.

“You love them.” Ace’s abrupt change in subject surprises her so she looks at him. His eyes are just as warm as his body and his smile flickers in the sun like a waning candle. Ushio allows his words to swirl and marinade inside of her mind.

Love is a funny word, a word that can mean so many different things. Felt in so many different ways.

Big Sister’s love was painful, like a shard of broken porcelain littering the floor. A beacon for a girl who did not know what love was.

Her mama’s love was always like the warmest day of the year, where even the tops of your toes and the tips of your fingers are warm with just a hint of the sun’s rays. Smothering in a way that makes you want to bask in its warmth and doze until the warmth slip beneath the horizon.

Usopp’s love feels like the first time her mama had baked cinnamon candies, soft pillows, and big blankets. Childish giggling and small hands burrowed into her back.

Ushio thinks about all of this, thinks about who Ace is talking about specifically, and only has one answer.

She hums in response and Ace laughs, ablaze and gleaming. She doesn’t bother smothering the grin in response.

“So not necessarily a good kind of change, huh?” He asks after his laughter finishes bouncing in the air. The light air that his laughter brought struggles in light of his question.

“Change is needed sometimes,” Ushio starts, feeling strange as she echos things she sometimes hears from the Voice. “The air is...Blackbeard is more than he seems. Blackbeard should not be taken likely.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Ace’s low tone rumbles out like hot steam. “He _killed Thatch_-”

“He’ll have a lot more blood on his hands if you don’t heed what I tell you. Why else would I warn you?” Ushio blows back at him, not bothering to soften the heavy words. Their eyes are locked and Ushio doesn’t falter as the air around them surges. Ace answers her with an all-consuming swelter that pours out of him. This weird...pressure is pouring off Ace.

She doesn’t allow it to make her hesitate.

“Ace,” His name doesn’t feel strange anymore when her lips shape around it. “You need to _live_.”

Ushio feels the way the air stills at her words, sees the moment when her words register, and watches the way Ace’s eyes go wide with something she doesn’t understand.

“Do whatever you can, do what you need to do with this Blackbeard. Be weary, be smart…and stay alive.” She turns away and looks towards her nakama again. They’re even further ahead than she had thought, their backs getting smaller and smaller. She finds the red back of her captain as Ace watches her.

“Because you love him.” She finishes. Ushio chances a glance out of the corner of her eye and sees the way Ace follows her gaze, tension slowly leaving his body. She begins to walk again, steps silent atop the hot sand. It isn’t long before she hears the rustle of his footsteps following her. They brush against each other as he settles to walk beside her, finally able to hear Sanji’s screams at Luffy.

“You’re kinda mysterious, aren’t ya?” His smile around the words make them pleasant to her ears. Ushio hunches forward, tucking her hands into her sleeve, and allowing the hood to shroud her face further in shade.

“So are you.” She says stubbornly, ignoring his answering chuckle. “Is that why you stayed?”

His chuckling becomes full blown laughter as they reach the back of the group. The laughter dances in the air all around them, playing and frolicking with the wind. She knows Ace and Luffy are not really related but...they are similar with their lines around their mouths and crinkles besides their smiling eyes.

“I’m being serious. W-Why did you listen? Why did you stay?” He pauses in his steps and Ushio stops. She turns to look at him and Ace has a strange expression on his face, something she’s not sure how to decipher. He’s so tall, she realizes suddenly, as his eyes trace over her face slowly and thoroughly. His long fingers reach up and he pulls the hood back from her face.

The hood falls, the sun is warm on her face, and Ace is still looking at her like that.

“Because you knew me, Ushio.”

Sanji watches her tug her curls out of the scarf she’s attempting to wrap around her. It’s a scarf he is very sure he didn’t pick out when he bought the rest of everyone’s clothes in the market. It is an iridescent white that shines in the light of the moon, emphasizing her brown skin and dark eyes.

It’s that same scarf Luffy’s brother, Ace, returned to her when he found them on their ship.

The same brother who finishes wrapping the scarf around her shoulders with a purposeful touch, hand lingering on her back as he finishes tucking the scarf in. Their mouths are moving, that much Sanji can see, but their words are too quiet. Too soft. With the moon beaming down on them and firelight dancing across their skin, they look like two lovers with their wide, gleaming gazes.

The way Ushio had pleaded with Ace, back on the ship, standing beside Luffy with the damned scarf clenched in her fists.

It made him think of Drum Island and the way her hair looked brushing against the deck as she bowed before a crowd of people. The glimpse of her face when Ace had started to leave, with smoke billowing around them and the smell of ruined ships burning in their noses. The look was...stricken in a way that Ushio has never made before, not since he has met her.

Desperation, with a mix of hopelessness and determination. All of that was there in the moment she had screamed his name.

Sanji thinks it’s the only time he’s ever heard her shout.

Catching another dark gaze watching the two of them carefully, Sanji gnaws on the cigarette in his mouth with a frown.

Usopp has always known that Ushio is not a morning person.

In the mornings on the ship, Usopp is usually the one who has to wake her up after Nami fails again and again. Usopp always does what their mama use to do. Usopp murmurs her name softly and Ushio’s eyes crack open almost immediately. She _always_ releases a soft breath, almost inaudible, like she’s startled. She blinks lazily at him, for a moment, and if Usopp doesn’t call her name a second time, her eyes droop once again under the siren of sleep.

Usopp tugs at her hand, tangling their fingers to pull her from her piles and piles of blankets, and Ushio followsdocile and sluggish.

She follows and follows, hopping from person to person, to whomever catches her after Usopp does his own morning routine, feet dragging audibly and hair wild around her head. Curls crinkled and crumpled, falling from the tall pineapple hairstyle she places it in at night. Lids heavy and sleep shirt hanging past her knees, Ushio looks like a sleepy cat searching for a place to settle.

So when Ace is the one to wake her after a night of sleeping in the desert, Usopp feels a little...weird about it.

“I’m going to leave now.” He announces to the crew as they’re all preparing for another day of trekking. They all start to say their goodbyes and when one voice doesn’t join them, they all turn to see Ushio still sleeping with Chopper resting against her chest. Nami sighs and Zoro chuckles while Sanji and Vivi coo in unison. Luffy looks like he’s one step away from joining them. Usopp is trying not to grumble as he makes his way towards the two when Ace reaches down and tugs at a falling curl. Ushio’s eyes open, slow and lazy, and she blinks up at Ace’s grinning face. She watches him for a moment, only a moment, before her eyes close again. Ace tugs on a curl.

“Wake up, mystery girl.”

“That’s a dumb name.” Ushio grumbles, swatting at his hand and sitting up. Chopper makes a soft noise as he’s shifted onto her lap with her movement but doesn’t wake. Ushio is clearly still trying to wake up, blinking slowly and curls wild around her face as Ace watches her.

Usopp is trying not to gape. He chances a look around and sees everyone’s sharp focus on the curl that Ace_ keeps_ tugging. Ushio’s head follows the tugging until she’s facing Ace completely and the rest of them can no longer see her face, just her wild black curls. Usopp can only see Ace grinning down at his sister with a look that he _doesn’t _like.

What is with these guys and Ushio?

“I’m leaving.” Ace says, watching Ushio’s face closely. Usopp can’t see the face Ushio makes but it makes Ace laugh. He can see the way Ace’s shoulders shift with the movement of his hand but he can’t see what that hand is_ doing_.

“Then leave.” Ushio’s grouchy voice makes Usopp want to laugh when Ace speaks again.

“Miss me while I’m gone?” Ace is somehow able to say the words loudly and softly, cooing the words at Ushio while making a deliberate kind of eye-contact with the rest of them. Usopp bristles immediately and opens his mouth to speak when Ushio tilts forward into Ace’s space, face clearly titling up.

Ace’s eyes gets wider the closer she gets and Usopp suddenly realizes that she might- that she could be trying to-

“Ushio-” Ace is barely able to stutter the words out, face red, when Ushio lands against his shoulder, soft snores filling the air along with Chopper’s snuffling.

There’s a moment of charged silence before the rest of them explode.

“Oi-Oi! ZORO! Sic ‘em!”

“Huh!? Unhand Shio-swan!”

“Tsk.”

“How cute!”

“Ace, I said you can’t have her!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmmm sorry it's taken me so long for an update! im actually posting this on my birthday so.......happy birthday to me! writer's block is a real bitch omg
> 
> ANYWHO this chapter is clearly a direct continuation of the last one. it's also going to be the last we see of Ace for a bit. hmmm i'll be honest, a lot of my writer's block had a lot to do with how i was going to diverge from canon in regards to Ace and in my original draft of the story, i totally had written this with Ushio leaving with Ace during Alabasta......................but it didn't feel right with the tone, and honestly felt ooc for both Ushio and Ace. At the end of the day, these two do not know each other and we're only getting to establish their dynamic in two chapters. sooooo yea idk im still feeling weird about it not going to lie, it's kinda hard to completely change how you're going to write a story when you hAD PLANS. 
> 
> so this chapter is sort of serious because we get the beginnings of canon divergence bc while i think (???) Ace stays with Luffy for a bit in the anime, he definitely does NOT in the manga which is what...i accept as canon. and we see Ushio actively trying to change major events in a weird, spooky Fortune Telling Lady kind of way. I clearly plan on keeping Ace alive if you're paying attention to the tags and we're just seeing the beginnings of that. 
> 
> um but honestly yea i don't really have a lot to say about this chapter. my apologies for its shortness though! i am definitely establishing the main ship starting now though, in case that wasn't obvious. because the ship for this story has not changed at ALL lol despite how tempting some of your ideas are. please let me know what you think and if you recognize any dialogue, that's the great oda-sensei to please don't sue! i'll be doing my obsessive reread as usual to try and catch mistakes. thank you and enjoy!


	12. Chapter 12

Ushio hates the sand. It’s all around them and she can’t really get it out of the air like she can most things. No matter what she does, she’s still getting some of this damn sand along with it. Yuba honestly makes her hate the sand even more than she already did.

Toh-Toh is crying, great heaving cries as he talks speak about rebels. Of their struggles, strife, and exhaustion. Ushio watches the way his hands trembles and she watches the way Vivi’s eyes go wide with something like horror.

“Please, Princess Vivi. Stop these fools!”

“Good old Toh-Toh...Please don’t worry. I’m going to stop the Rebellion!”

Vivi’s words ring with a promise punctuated with her false grin and Ushio watches as this girl stretches herself another inch too thin. Ushio sighs, turning away from the sight and catches Luffy’s gaze immediately. He blinks at her and Ushio brushes against his shoulder lightly as she passes, walking towards the only inn she can see.

“Th-Thank you!!”

Ushio really hates the sand.

“No beads, huh?” The rumbling voice comes from behind her just as a blanket wraps around her shoulders. Ushio turns from watching Luffy and Toh-Toh and sees Zoro, settling in the space beside her in a loose sleeping shirt that reveals the beginnings of his collarbones. She finds her gaze lingering on the way his green hair is glinting underneath the moon before she manages to look at his face.

His eyes are hooded but intense as ever and he’s watching the way her hair is curling around her shoulders and face. She smiles as he reaches up and pulls some of the strands through his fingers. She catches his fingers before he manages to completely pull away and guides them towards her ear. She lets go just as his callused fingertips touches the beaded hops that hug the outside of her ear. His palm is parallel to her face and she tries to ignore the fluttering in her chest at the warmth radiating from his hand.

“Still there. Just different.” She speaks into the air between them. His eyes linger at her ear before he finally meets her gaze. Their eyes clash and she thinks she’s sees something odd flickering in his eyes before his mouth opens.

“You should be getting some rest.” Zoro says, staring at her relentlessly. Ushio blinks and can’t help the small laugh that escapes her.

“Yea, I will when you do.” She knocks into his shoulder lightly and Zoro’s scoff makes a little smile bloom. There’s the sound of Luffy and Toh-Toh digging in the distance, Luffy’s voice reaching her ears through the air like it often does. It makes a nice background noise to thousands of twinkling stars in the sky and Zoro’s pretty hair shining in the light of the moon.

“Besides, I really can’t stop thinking about...” Ushio speaks softly at first, petering off as she finds herself hesitating.

“Yea…” Zoro’s voice is knowing and soothing. Ushio’s smile turns brittle as she thinks about this situation they’ve landed themselves into. A part of her relaxes at the thought of Zoro knowing what she wants to say and knowing there really isn’t_ much_ to say about it. After all…

“Luffy is going to take care of it.” Both of their voices collide in the air and they’re both left blinking at each other stupidly. Ushio’s brittle smile becomes a grin and she has the pleasure of watching Zoro throw his head back and laugh. His laughter mixes beautifully with the sounds of Luffy and Toh-toh underneath the beautiful night sky.

She’s thinking of that laughter later when the sun beams down on them once again, face a little flush and a strange buzzing underneath her skin. She’s thinking of the way that Toh-toh waved as Vivi, arm skinny and dark from the heat of the sun. She’s thinking of the way Vivi waved back, dry lips tight with a smile that looked frail.

There’s a thud that draws Ushio from her thoughts. She turns around and Luffy is sitting beneath a small, bare tree, arms folded behind his head with a large frown on his face.

Ushio makes eye-contact with Zoro.

“What’s wrong, Luffy?” Vivi’s words, as they venture deeper into Alabasta, has become coated with a high note, almost like the chirping of birds in the early morning. It’s slowly grating at Ushio’s patience. Her patience with the beaming sun, her patience with the sand, and her patience with Alabasta. As Luffy makes a slow hum at the back of his throat, she thinks...no, she knows it’s getting at Luffy too.

“I quit.” He says only a brief moment after his hum ends. As the atmosphere plummets around them all at Luffy’s words, Ushio tucks the bottom of her face into her scarf to hide the beginnings of a smile. Sanji and Vivi’s shouts ring in her ears as she studies Luffy’s face. His eyebrows are furrowed over his dark, expressive eyes, emphasizing the line of his scar in a way that draws her eyes completely.

There’s a palpable energy in the air, highlighting the buzzing underneath her skin. The way Luffy looks, the sun beaming down on his deceptively relaxed posture. It makes Ushio think of Cocoyashi Villiage and Arlong Park in the way Luffy had settled across that open road, relaxed in the sun. Waiting.

“Vivi...I wanna kick Crocodile’s butt!!” Luffy’s words slip through the air loudly and she sees the way Vivi freezes. Back on Cocoyashi, Nami had begged for helped…and Ushio remembers Nami’s blood slipping through her fingers as she barely held herself together.

“Stopping the rebels...isn’t going to stop Crocodile. There’s nothing we can do in that Katorea place. We’re pirates. It’d be better if we didn’t even go there.”

As Vivi stutters awkwardly, she briefly wonders if this is going to end similarly.

“You think you can stop the rebels...without anybody getting killed?! That none of us and none of your people are going to die?!” Luffy’s voice rolls out of him, his words ringing all around them, and it drones as if he’s getting more bored as he talks.

“We’re up against one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. A million people are itching to fight...and you expect everybody to live?” It’s a slowing cadence the longer he speaks, mingling with the air filled with sand and more sand.

“That’s naive.”

Loud still, but slow. Ushio watches the way Nami bristles with indignation on Vivi’s behalf and she watches the way Sanji holds her back, his stare impenetrable as he watches his captain. Ushio burrows further into her scarf, inhaling as Luffy delivers the next words with a sort of bleak frankness that makes Ushio look directly at Vivi’s reddening face.

“People die.”

The sound of the punch is as loud as Luffy’s words. It’s a deafening slap of skin against skin and Ushio flinches as Luffy’s head snaps back from the force of it. Vivi’s screams fill the air, her voice cracking and breaking.

“I’m trying to save the rebels!! And the Royal Army!! No one in this kingdom is to blame! Why must any of my people die?! It’s all that Crocodile’s fault!”

“But yet, you’re risking your own life!” Luffy’s punch resonates in the air along with Vivi’s grunt as it strikes. Ushio reaches out suddenly, hands gripping the back of Usopp’s and Sanji’s fluttering coats just as they jolt forward shout. They turn to her in unison, faces aghast, only to pause once they see the look of her face.

“Listen...” She murmurs, along with the Voice, just as Luffy screams out.

“Then let us help you! We’re your friends, aren’t we?!”

“All right...so where do we find this Crocodile?”

Vivi tries to hold back, hand rubbing harshly into the back of her eyes as she nearly chokes on her sobbing. There’s a strange weightlessness that she feels as Luffy’s shout keeps ringing in her ears. She didn’t realize she held a tightness in her shoulders, a weight on her back. Not until she heard those words.

The words from her friends.

Vivi sniffs loudly, hand clenching the hood of her coat as she attempts to cover her crying. Only to pause as a hand rests on her own. She looks up and it’s Ushio staring down at her, face in that blank expression but her eyes are open and gleaming with something Vivi doesn’t understand. Vivi startles, flinching slightly as Ushio tugs at Vivi’s hands with one hand and tugs at her own scarf with another.

Movements slow, Ushio kneels before her and reaches up. Vivi feels the cool exhale of her breath against her face just as Ushio uses the scarf to wipe at Vivi’s tears and dripping snot. The brilliant white fabric is soft against her face as Ushio brushes it lightly underneath her eyes and under her nose. It smells fragrant, like the oils that Ushio uses in her hair, and wispy in a way that she thinks might be unique to Ushio.

“Are you ready?” Ushio whispers the words to her underneath the sounds of everyone gathering their things to move again. Vivi blinks up at her wordlessly, feeling strange and empty as her tears stop, and, for some odd reason, that causes Ushio to laugh. The placid expression breaks apart quickly into one where Ushio’s darkening cheeks spread wide and her eyes, open and gleaming, almost shut in her mirth. Her hair bounces with her laugh, tumbling around her face and down her back.

Vivi allows herself to fall forward, knocking aside Ushio’s hand, and tucks her face into Ushio’s hair. It crowds around her, the curls tickling her face and brushing against her cheeks. Vivi breathes in the scent of Ushio’s skin deeply and watches the way her curls flutter in the air as she exhales.

Ushio pulls her closer without hesitation, all the while standing them both up with a small rush of air underneath their feet. Vivi stays burrowed in Ushio’s hair, even as their feet touch the ground again.

“We’ll take care of this, Vivi.” Ushio says her name softly, her voice caressing it like it’s something precious. Vivi thinks...it may be the first time Ushio has said her name.

“Luffy will...take care of this.”

“We should split up.”

The air is whistling past her ears and she can’t help the way she tsks as the Millions shout after them. She’s running behind Sanji and Chopper when she feels the Millions press a little too close. Spinning on her heel, she reaches out into the air, gathering it roughly towards her. Her loose cloak and scarf whip up as the wind picks up all around her. She watches them fling up into the air as they rip off her. As sand cuts through the air and nips at her now exposed skin, she grins, feral and wild.

“_Pressure Cage._”

Wind howls in her ears as she releases a small gale at the Millions. Ushio can’t hear their yells over the wind rushing past her as she makes sure to direct the gale around the innocent bystanders who watch their wares blow away.

She laughs out loud when she hears Sanji loudly complimenting her. She turns and sees Sanji kick a Million so hard he crashes through a glass store front.

“Your form looks as stunning as always, Shio-swan!”

It takes them longer than they all expect, the agents coming from all over the streets towards the three of them. She keeps track of Sanji and Chopper through the air in their lungs, the rising and falling in the back of her mind as she flips a man over her shoulder and shoots an air bullet at another sneaking behind her.

She can’t keep track of the other Strawhats, as split up as they are, not like this. Not when she has to focus on pulling the air out of these persistent Millions. She hears choked gasps all around her just as another tries to take a swing at her. Ushio reaches out into the air just as she ducks underneath the katana. She bashes a fist into the Millions wrist, forcing them to let go of the sword. With a flick of her wrist, she catches it by the hilt and flips it in her hand. With a swing, a dark splatter of blood arches in the air.

The air sings as it answers back and Ushio twirls the air out all around her, mingling low and high pressures with a thought. The rest of the Millions around her scream, loud and ringing, as they’re caught up in the dust devil of Ushio’s creation.

A cut off scream behind her let’s her know that others are done. She lets out a weary sigh as the sun beats down at her now exposed skin, sand lingering in the creases of her body. Turning towards where she sees Sanji and Chopper crowding a man against the casino, she makes her way towards them with her hands tugging the rest of her windblown hair into a large bun at the top of her head.

“This is...Restaurant Le Crap.”

Ushio stares, gaping at the words coming from Sanji’s mouth. He smirks back at her, curly eye-brow ticked up charmingly. It’s then that she hears Crocodile’s voice for the first time. It’s harsh and rasping, like the sand all around him.

“Who are you!?”

Wait...the sand. Ushio comes to the sudden realization that she’s forgotten something very important. This Crocodile, the Warlord, has a devil fruit. It’s...the sand one, just like she’s air. With all the sand lingering on her exposed skin, a result of her moving air to and fro, Ushio suddenly feels dirty.

“Me? I’m...Mr. Prince.”

Ushio thinks. She thinks hard. If Crocodile is sand...he’s all around them, right? Just like herself with the air? Can she actually fight against something like that? Sand gets everywhere. It has been everywhere since they’ve stopped on this island. She can’t filter it out.

The cries from her captured nakama makes Ushio clench her fist tightly. This isn’t the time for worries about what might happen or what she can do in the future. She makes an air bullet at Sanji’s request and listens as they manage to trick this Warlord into thinking they were captured. The transponder snail stops with a click and there’s a moment of silence between them all. Sanji releases a long sigh before he turns towards where they came from.

“Chopper, there’s more of them coming from where we were. We need a distraction, a diversion.” He calls out, patting Chopper on the back as he trembles. Ushio smiles at Chopper when they make eye-contact.

“You’re more than enough to handle something like that.” She says, tugging at the sleeve of the coat they’ve given him. She watches the way he gulps nervously before he nods with a determined frown on his face. He goes, running down the street shouting about being Mr. Prince, while Sanji and Ushio make their way across the bridge.

“Maa, maa...I guess there’s only one more thing left to do then, huh?” She mutters as they make their way to the other side. Without pausing as she makes her way up the stairs leading into the casino, Ushio releases a pressure cage down on top of the bridge. The bridge groans loudly before it collapses almost immediately.

“Mr. Prince, huh?”

“A Prince has to save the Princess, doesn’t he?” Sanji smirks around the lit cigarette in his mouth. Ushio grins back as they make their way across the bridge.

Ushio is wet and weak, still hacking up water, when she hears the whisper. She whips around and Vivi is rising up into the air, an ugly choking noise escaping her as she’s yanked clear off the crab by a large hook. Ushio leaps forward into the air current just as Luffy shouts.

“Vivi!”

“Stop it, Chopper!” She’s the air surrounding that hook, but its hard. The sand. It’s _fucking_ everywhere. She feels Crocodile in his sand, his presence heavy as they fight for control over the hook. She can’t grab the sand, she can’t push it down when it’s literally everywhere.

Corporal, she coughs around the frustration building up in her throat as she grabs Vivi. In a smooth movement, she tugs the girl out of the hook. A stretched arm wraps around them both and yanks them back. Ushio lets go of the hook right just as Luffy wraps an arm around the hook instead. Ushio feels the way her eyes grow big as Luffy makes eye-contact with her.

“Ushio!”

“Luffy!” She shouts, readying herself to leap after him. Her knees bend and she gathers the air around her to rocket after him when Luffy shouts back at her.

“I can handle this! Go on without me!” The startled, angry look on his face leaves and it makes her pause. It is replaced with his brilliant grin and Ushio’s heart stops stuttering wildly in her chest for just a brief moment.

The grin pulls tight at his cheeks and his eyes convey a message that she receives immediately. She slumps to her knees with a long exhale.

“Take care of Vivi! Make sure she gets to Alubarna!”

She tears her gaze away from the grin on his face and she looks out at the stretch of desert between them, Luffy, and Crocodile. Somehow, she meets Crocodile’s gaze. His scarred visage is hard to see but his eyes are the clearest thing about him. A chill that has nothing to do with water still clinging on her skin rakes through her.

As Zoro’s voice rumbles over the rest of them on top of this running crab, Ushio realizes that his eyes are empty, bright in color but empty.

“...you have to survive, no matter what happens to the rest of us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lived, bitches. 
> 
> honestly....yea COVID-19 has been quite a ride EDIT: thankfully my family and myself have been fine as wine throughout all this so sorry didn’t mean to imply that i was sick or anything. i hope all of yall are safe out there! I should be updating again sometime in the next week or so. i think we're probably going to get two more chapters of Alabasta, honestly. I didn't expect to run through the events here, but honestly Alabasta is important in so many different ways.! i wrote this like i was having a wild fever dream so i expect many mistakes, also it's gonna read a little unlike my usual style too...i think. any recognized dialogue is being taken straight from the manga so please don't sue oda-sensei. apologize for such a short chapter after a long wait but please let me know what you think! you guys stay beautiful!


	13. Chapter 13

The sand goes on for miles and miles all around them, and Ushio looks up at the stairs leading into the palace. She's standing back to back with Vivi, leaning against her lightly as she talks to Karoo.

"Well, don't blame me if you get trampled!" Vivi laughs around the words, and it makes Ushio smile.

The ground begins to tremble underneath their feet. She feels Vivi gathers up the air in her lungs, drawing strength and resolve out of her exhale. Closing her eyes, Ushio reaches out into the air and feels all around them. She feels the rebels coming closer, the air cutting through their numbers. There are millions of them and their resolve is saturating the air.

"Be ready to fight to the death!"

So is Vivi's.

"Rebels! Stop! This battle is a set up! Hear me out!"

Vivi's shouts are echoing in her ears when Ushio feels something hurtling through the air towards them. Straightening quickly, she swings an arm out sharply. The air sings as she pushes the cannon ball up into the air. It explodes above them, and smoke spreads across the hot air around them.

"Don't falter! Charge!”

"No! Stop!" Vivi shouts, voice hoarse. The sound of horses running on sand and the lingering boom of the explosion rings in their ears. The rebels are getting closer still and Ushio turns. All she sees is a black horse and a white cloak, before she realizes that they're going to be trampled. She yanks Vivi into her arms, cutting off her shout.

"Koz-"

Karoo quacks loudly and Ushio launches them all up the air with a gale that blows all of the smoke away. No one stops, no one looks as the two sides collide.

They land softly, even as the sounds of the battle sound all around them. Ushio lets them all drop back on the sand with a soft noise. The sun is baking her bare shoulders and arms, and Ushio is watching Vivi's face crumble briefly as she gathers up all that strength again.

Vivi sniffs loudly, and Ushio grins at her when they make eye-contact. VIvi flashes a grin back at her that's mostly just teeth, a line of snot still visibly under her nose.

"There is something I learned on that ship...and that's never give up!" The words are spirited enough that Ushio laughs loudly just as someone shouts Vivi's name. They turn in unison and Ushio's laugh halts, lips still stuck in her merry grin, as she sees...

"Hop on-" This impostor wearing her brother's face chokes as Ushio jerks them right off the horse. She growls, low and rough, as she slams their head into the sand, pinning. They don’t change their face, only flails their arm in a way so similar to her brother that it makes her grinds their face deeper into the sand.

"Vivi," They nearly chokes on the sand underneath their cheek. "Who-"

"Vivi!" Ushio shouts over their struggles, "Go! I'll be right behind you."

Ushio doesn't give Vivi time to respond before she slams down a harsh pressure to trap this imposter beneath her. Ushio doesn't flinch as the faces changes from Usopp to a man she hasn't seen before. The man tries to howl over the wind but Ushio doesn't hear him. She only stares down at this man who tried to wear her brother's face, rage seeping into every pore of her skin along with the hot sun.

Ah, she thinks faintly with a dull ringing in her ears. This must be the man who wears faces.

Mr. 2 Bon Clay.

“You should have never worn my brother’s face.” Ushio snarls the words down at Bon. He shifts underneath her, face pressed into the sand even as he meets her gaze. His mouth opens to speak, only his gaze suddenly goes to something behind her. His visible corner of his mouth quirks into a grin just as she feels breath against the back of her neck and the brush of sand traveling down her arms.

Her eyes grow wide as a soft hand grabs her neck and a strangely familiar smell floods her nose.

“Hello..._little sister._”

Ushio is barely able to gasp, before she's yanked clear off of Mr. 2 by the grip on her neck. She calls for the air, to become intangible, to slip into it. This grip on her neck just tightens before she's slammed into the ground hard enough that she cries out.

"Bon, go. I can take care of this one." The words are spoken directly into her ear, and Ushio doesn't pause, ignores the pain along with the sand in her mouth, and swings her head back. The person shouts, the hands release her, and Ushio rolls out from under the woman on top of her. She slips into the air until she is a few feet away, and she looks up.

The woman is tall and slim with a sword on her back that is almost as tall as she is. It drags across the sand as she slowly comes to a stand. Her head lifts, and Ushio ignores the blood on her face from her broken nose to take in her other features. The words she spoke are from...Before. She called her something only one person has called her. This woman, with her white hair and dark eyes. She’s not that person.

"I can hear your thoughts from here, _little sister."_

"Who are you?" Ushio shouts, suddenly angrier than she ever remembers being. She’s trying to connect dots. Dots that don’t make sense because all the dots are connecting to only one person, and that's impossible.

Just as impossible as that hand reaching into her, grabbing onto her, and slamming her into the ground.

She watches the woman throw her head back and laugh. The laugh is low and hard, slithering through the air and feeling as though it rests atop Ushio's shoulders. The hairs on the back of her neck rise as some kind of blackness begin to cover the woman's arms.

Ushio is suddenly flooded with whispers, loud and soft. They're saying too much, and not enough. They say that this woman is different and strange like her. They say that this woman is lost. They say that this woman needs her. The whispers and the Voice are so loud and jumbled that it nearly covers the woman's next words.

"I think the better question here is 'Who are you?’." The woman speaks around a smile that looks jagged, nearly crazed. Her dark eyes dart all around Ushio's face like she's starved and searching for something to satiate her appetite.

Whatever she sees causes the smile to waiver for just a moment until that snake-like quality returns to it.

"I never...stopped looking for you. Somehow, I knew. Knew that you were here too." She pauses to spit out a mouthful of blood on the sand, and Ushio watches her white hair gleams silver in the shining sun.

"I woke up here, after everything." The woman is muttering at this point, the words nearly lost to the wind, and Ushio has had enough.

"Look, lady, I don't know-"

The only warning she gets is a glint in the sun and Ushio ducks, weary of the black glint of the sword. It cuts through her hair instead of her neck, and Ushio worries. That black stuff is making her Devil’s Fruit useless.

With a deep inhale, she listens to the wind and the air around her, and Ushio begins to solely rely on her training from Before. She ducks and dodges around the sword swinging at her, and the woman won’t stop screaming at her over the sounds of the wind gales Ushio is throwing at her.

“I don’t have a name even here. I was born _marked, _suffering, and traded from place to place. Given names as I went. But you, who are you?”

The woman’s eyes are gleaming, and she’s flickering in and out of Ushio’s senses. Ushio kicks outs, and the woman dodges. Ushio swings, and the woman ducks. Ushio tries to use the air, pulling and pulling and pulling, and the woman never stops that ugly laughter as her eyes gleam like she’s holding back tears.

She is predicting Ushio’s moves, and Ushio is starting to get sloppy, so sloppy that she’s punched with a fist reinforced with sand. It sends her sprawling, despite her attempts to slip into the air. Spitting out the grit in her mouth, Ushio works to calm herself but it’s hard when her frustration and anger are stacking on top of each other. Vivi needs her, the Strawhats need her, and she’s fighting here, feeling like she’s dancing in this woman’s palm.

The woman has tears rolling down her cheeks when her dark gaze meeting Ushio’s. She’s crying, even as she swings at Ushio with the intent to kill. It makes Ushio angrier.

“I don’t give a fuck about your sad back story, lady.” Ushio grits out, “I don’t know you!”

Ushio does not know her. Not in this life, not in this story.

"You do know! _Little sister_, you know me! Just like I know you." The words are shouted, and, with a thought, Ushio slips into the air and gets close enough to feel the breath of the scream against her face and to smell the blood in the woman’s mouth.

She reaches out only for her fingers slip through the woman’s wrist like she’s trying to grasp _air_. Only she should be able to do it, because she is air. The air is hers just as much as she is the air’s.

An ugly laugh breaks open right in her ear before a searing pain runs through her. Ushio stutters to a stop, inches away from the woman’s face to look down.

There’s a sword protruding through her chest. Ushio watches her blood run down the blade with a strange sort of detachment. It has missed her heart, she thinks, but with the way blood is flooding her mouth. Maybe...it’s through her lungs. The sword is cutting clean through both her and the woman, strangely enough.

The blackness only covers the part of the sword inside of Ushio.

Hand grasping the sword through her chest in a grip she doesn’t really feel, Ushio looks up into the dark eyes of this white-haired woman. The woman leans in closer, her tears flowing even as her mouth curves with a smile full of happiness.

“_Little sister, little sister. Those eyes of yours are still recognizable._” The woman is mumbling purely in _her _language and Ushio, resigned, sags until her forehead touches the woman’s shoulder. She closes her eyes and, with the taste of blood on her tongue, gives the woman what she wants.

“_Hello, big sister._” She says, and Ushio feels the woman freezes before she sags forward with a sob. Her free arm wraps around Ushio, pulling her closer, and Ushio screams as the sword pulls further into her chest. She nearly chokes on the blood in her mouth as she falls to her knees. The woman follows her down.

“_Shh, shh_.” Big Sister pats her head soothingly, despite the fact that she’s muffling cries into Ushio’s shoulder. She lets go of the sword completely to clutch on the Ushio’s shoulders like it’s the only thing holding her together. Opening her eyes sluggishly, Ushio carefully watches the black recede from the sword.

“_Say it. Say it again._” Big Sister sobs in her ear and Little Sister obliges, because she thinks she might die here. With blood flooding her lungs, dying at the hands of someone from her past, someone she loved even if that love hurt. A painful love because they were young girls who didn’t know how to love, didn’t know what love was.

“_Big Sister.” _

She had questions, questions about how Big Sister ended up here, with her. Questions about what had happened to her Big Sister because there is clearly something wrong here. Questions about if there are others like them, even others like Big Sister. Broken and full of cracks. Others who died and became something else. Because if they’re here then doesn’t that mean...

She swallows those questions down with the blood in her mouth. There’s a dull ringing in her ears, she thinks, but all she can hear are Big Sister’s ugly cries. All she can feel is the way Big Sister is holding her. Her hand begins to grow slack on the sword in her chest.

_Nee-chan!_

Ushio jolts, blinks blearily, because she thinks...she thinks she hears...

_Ushio!_

Usopp, who loves her with everything he has. Usopp, who smells spicy like cinnamon and salty like the wind that travels through Syrup. Usopp, who cried out for a little girl who didn’t know how to deal with her own grief. Usopp...who would be alone without...Ushio.

She can smell the saltiness of Big Sister’s tears through the familiar smell that she somehow carried with her into this world. Ushio inhales it, just a little, only to find herself wanting the spiciness that comes with cinnamon and the saltiness that comes from the sea.

The blackness on this woman’s limbs, on her arms, on her sword. It’s gone. Ushio smiles with a bloody mouth and pulls away.

The woman is still smiling, the smile full of her deranged happiness and joy. Ushio cradles her face in her hands, and the woman blinks those dark, hopeless eyes up at her with tears still falling down her face.

“_Big Sister_.” Ushio mumbles through clenched blood soaked teeth as a newfound sort of energy fills her. “_Your name is and will always be Big Sister.”_

Something is creeping deep down her spine from a space in the recesses of her mind. A strange, full feeling as she remember Usopp. She remembers Luffy. She remembers Zoro. She remembers Nami, Sanji, and Chopper. Her nakama, her family, her found family in this world. She remembers what they’re all here fighting for. What they’re all prepared to die for.

This feeling floods her entire being, filling her with the will to live just to make sure she sees this through. See all of this through.

“_Yes, yes. And yours? What’s your name?” _

Ushio pulls her close, knocking their foreheads together gently. Ushio lets go of ever being Little Sister. Ushio looks inside herself and grasps that will to see this through until it feels like it pours out of every inch of her skin.

She looks inside this woman, into Big Sister, and sees the air pulling in and out of her lungs, the oxygen in her blood, and Ushio grabs it. The sword clatters to the ground with nothing to hold it up and she watches the way those dark eyes of Big Sister, filled with tears that look like crystals, grow big and wide.

“My name is Ushio.”

“Yes, the fighting is...”

There is a sharp sound in the air, high pitched and whining, that comes with a large dust cloud that blocks everything from Vivi's view. She blinks, and gunshots fill the air along with a loud crash. There's a queer silence before shouts begin to resonate in the air. Vivi has a moment where she worries, because this was supposed to be the moment. The moment that would change the tide of this bloody war.

"Stop!" Koza's voice is louder than all others, and it silences the courtyard below the palace. The dust clears, and the royal guards are somehow scattered away from Koza as if something has slammed through them. Among both the rebels and guards, there is visible disarray. There are some on the ground, bleeding out from various wounds while the ones without injury are struggling to get up, visibly shaken with their guns aiming at something, someone standing at the back of Koza, whose white flag is knocked to the ground and slowly turning a dark red.

Vivi nearly chokes on a her gasp as she finally sees what they are all staring at.

There are two royal guards. There is one prone on the ground with a bloody chest, gasping out his final breaths as his blood slowly turns Koza’s white flag red. The other stands with trembling knees and the sharp point of a long sword pointed at his forehead. Standing over both of the guards like a dark wraith is Ushio.

Her hair is visibly shorter and loose, curling and sticking to the blood splattered across her bruised face and neck as it sways in the dip between her shoulder blades. There are thin scratches down her arm leaking blood that drips off her hand, and her skirt has been ripped up to her thighs, revealing a gash running up her left leg. A horrific wound rests somewhere near her cleavage, leaking blood that coats her entire chest and stomach. There are visible wisps of air rolling off her, and with every heave of her jumping back, a new gust of air pushes out keeping all the other guards at bay.

Despite all of this, the sword is steady in her hand and Ushio looks fierce and wild as she stares down the guard.

“There are traitors among you,” Ushio rasps softly even as the words echo, “...and this is a set-up.”

Ushio’s head tilts the slightest bit towards Koza who flinches back. Vivi can’t see her face any longer, but whatever it does makes Koza straighten visibly.

“Yes. The fight is over. We were tricked. We are all suffering at the hands of Baroque Works, lead by the Warlord Crocodile. The King, the royal palace, everyone. They’re...we’re all innocent.” Koza’s voice gathers more strength as he speaks, and the rebels’ grips slacken on their guns the more he talks.

The royal guards don’t. Their hands are steady on their guns as Ushio gives her full attention back to the guard at the end of the sword she’s carrying.

“Maa, maa. There’s really only one thing to do with traitors.” Ushio says with an air of calm only betrayed by the wind still billowing off her. “Don’t you think?”

"What are you?" The guard at the end of the sword stutters over the words. Ushio's head tilts slowly to the side, sending a cascade of her curls off her shoulders and further down her back. She blinks down at the man at the end of the sword in her hands, and she smiles. One full of bloody teeth that still gleams brightly in the bright sun of the desert.

The hairs on the back of Vivi's neck rise.

"I''m a pirate."

The sword swings before anyone can blink. A thud echoes, and the Koza’s white flag turns completely red. Ushio flicks the blood off the sword with an easy motion that betrays her experience with swords before she rests the sword on her shoulder in a way that reminds Vivi of Zoro.

There’s a pause where Ushio looks around at all the guns pointing at her. Visibly ignoring them, she looks up and, somehow, makes eye-contact with Vivi. Ushio waves, with a sheepish kind of look on her face, and the guns all cock in unison.

“Wait!” Vivi screams, scrambling to move only to be stopped by a hook. Crocodile yanks her back harshly. Ushio doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. Instead, she looks up just as a heavy flap of wings heralds a scream that echoes for the entire courtyard to hear.

“**CROCODILE!**”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmm. remember when i said i was gonna have a chapter out in a week or so, ya know...like a liar? 
> 
> thank you for the kind words with the last chapter! honestly, you guys give me a lot to think about when i write and i appreciate all the feedback. with that said.....lmao. the plot thickens when it comes to Ushio and Before. i know, i know this MIGHT seem a little sudden, MAYBE lol but also....i don't put anything in this story with out a reason. even weird tiny details. and i swear we're gonna get more details about that fight and like...lmao everything. that's all im going to say about that! please be patient with me.
> 
> Let me know what yall think! I love you guys, you're beautiful. Stay safe! Disclaimer: all recognized dialogue definitely belongs to Oda-sensei, so please don't sue. No beta, so ima do my re-read thing to fix my 2 a.m. writing binge errors.


	14. Chapter 14

She thinks this entire situation may have been a bit more panicked in the Before version. She’s definitely changed something because the rebels and palace guards are fighting alongside the marines, and the Baroque Works agents are on the ropes as they’re weeded out.

It’s just that there’s still a bomb, and Crocodile still needs to be defeated.

Luffy sets Vivi down next to Ushio, and he turns to look at her with eyes burning with something that makes Ushio’s heart race.

“I won’t lose. Not this time.” He’s saying the words around a grin that Ushio answers with a loud cackle. Vivi’s crow of excitement joins just as Ushio hears the sound of her brother shouting.

“See!?! I knew it all along!” She turns, and her grin drops instantly.

“Do you know how to dodge at all?!” She shouts, springing forward and hovering over her bandaged brother. He’s doing his weird weeping, and he is somehow able to dodge around her hands.

“Do you?! You have an entire hole in your chest!”

“Clearly not! How are you _moving_?” Nami screams from behind her, and Ushio cringes. She catches Nami’s baton before it can collide with her brother’s head. She directs a deadpan stare at her.

“Maa, maa. No need for-”

“If you say violence, so help me, Ushio-” There’s a sudden warmth from her right, and Zoro ducks forward like he wants to take a closer look at the wound across her front.

“Heh...we kind of match.” Ushio registers the words faintly, and a sudden flush of heat that has nothing to do with the beaming sun warms her face right before Usopp wacks his bandaged arm on her head.

“Stop that!”

Luffy is warm. It sinks into his tired body, and he's confused. He's trying to remember what he was doing before the warmth. He was fighting, wasn't he?

...Crocodile!

Luffy wakes with something close to a gasp and the first thing he sees is Ushio. Her hands are cradling his face, he realizes, and her palms are warm. She is close enough that Luffy can see the faint beauty marks around the corners of her eyes, and he can smell the faintest scent of blood in her mouth. Her breath caresses his mouth for a mere second as her hair brushes the sides of his face. She leans back.

Luffy stands, solid on the sand, and Ushio smiles from her place on the ground, even though her eyes are dark with an intent that resounds in Luffy.

Luffy loves Ushio's smile.

Ushio's head tilts in the way it does when she is trying to hear something better, and her smile flickers for the slightest second before her body does that weird vanishing into air thing as a loud echoing bang sounds through the air.

"Let's finish this, Little King."

He loves when she calls him Little King too.

Pell is flying, trying to get a better grasp of what he's seeing when the wind beneath his wings pushes up harshly enough that he spirals through the air and a loud shot echoes. It misses him by an inch, and he feels the sudden weight of a person on his back.

"Hey!" The voice is husky in a way that reminds Pell of the dancers at the casino, with their hooded gazes and winding hips. He can't see the person riding between his wings, but something tells him that the person is one of those pirates.

"Head back towards the clock tower!" The woman shouts, hands gentle in their hold on his feathers. "Grab Vivi, and I'll take care of the rest."

For some reason, he has a feeling that the person is smiling.

Vivi's shout is ringing through the air when all of them hear the flapping of wings. Zoro looks and it's the bird guy gliding into the open face of the tower's clock.

"Did you see that?" Usopp mummers and Zoro goes to answer when he sees her.

Ushio is hovering in the air in a way that only she can, her arms spread out in front of her with her palms facing the sky in a telling motion. Her arms draw back sharply towards her chest, and the bomb zooms out of the tower towards her.

Usopp's gasp of air is as dry as the desert around them, and Nami stammers something that resembles Ushio's name.

Ushio grabs the handle, and with a spin that reminds Zoro of the nights on Merry where he watched her dance with Luffy and Usopp, she throws the bomb into the beaming sun with a sound that reverberates throughout the entire city, high-pitched and whining. She bends her knees, and Zoro realizes that she is going to launch herself right after it.

"**Ushio!**" He shouts before he can stop himself, and he thinks he sees her glance over her shoulder before she's gone with a crack. She's a speck in the sky, and the bomb explodes. The heat of the bomb, the air that rushes down never reaches them and that can only be Ushio's doing.

The bird guy lands next to them easily, and they all turn to see Vivi stumble off his back. She is stuttering something, her eyes darting around the sky.

"I tried-I tried to say something to her, but I-"

"She's fine. " Usopp, bandaged from head to toe, cuts off the stammering sternly. He's staring them all down in a way that raises the hairs on the back of Zoro's neck. He is very suddenly reminded of the fact that Usopp and Ushio are siblings.

"She's fine. Now we just need to take care of the rest."

There is only a moments pause before they do just that. Time passes, and rain falls all around them as they watch the King and Vivi walk away. Zoro tilts his head toward the sky for just a moment, searching for something...someone. His lips form around a name, her name, before he really knows what he's doing.

"Ushio."

They're all swaying, slumping their way to the ground when Zoro feels the weight of someone's head resting on his shoulder. He allows his head to drop down to rest on top of theirs, and the heady smell of earthy oils and cinnamon lulls him into darkness.

The room is dark with only the moonlight allowing her to see. She creeps silently until she reaches the bed. She lifts the blanket, and dark eyes are staring back at her. They stare at each other for only a moment, before she pushes him over with a grunt.

"You don't need to be so pushy! Aren't we a little too old for this?"

"Didn't you try to sneak into the girl's room last week because you thought you found a bug in your hammock?"

"Shhh!!" Usopp keeps grumbling under his breath until she's settled into the bed. He pulls the blanket over their heads, and Ushio feels like she's four years old all over again with the sound of her brother's breathing surrounding her in their little blanket world.

Their limbs are longer, their bodies are bigger, and they still manage to fit together like two parts of a whole.

"Who is she?" Usopp whispers into the air between their faces.

Ushio fights the urge to tense, despite this being the entire reason why she's in Usopp's bed tonight. Of course Usopp has caught wind of the rumors of Ushio dragging one of the Baroque Works agents to the palace. He wasn't their town's best gossip for nothing.

When she visible hesitates, Usopp asks another question.

“She’s not just a Baroque Works agent, right?”

“No, she’s not.”

Usopp gives a couple of firm nods, his eyes shuttering blank in a strange familiar way as he takes in the information, and Ushio uses the opportunity to speak again.

"U-Uh...she's...Big Sister._ Big Sister_." Ushio says it once in the East Blue dialect Banchina taught them both, and then again in the language that only she knows. She watches Usopp's gaze grow wide before it narrows.

"She's the one who did that to you?" The words tremble their way out of his mouth, and Ushio nods.

"She is."

Ushio watches Usopp's face as he processes the information, his face flickering through a series of emotions before it settles on rage. The blanket rustles, Ushio reaches, and Usopp still escapes her grasp as he yanks the blanket from over their heads. Luckily his feet tangle in the blanket, and he crashes to the ground with a loud thump.

Unluckily, their nakama all shoot up in various states of alarm.

“Eh?”

“Whatsit?”

“Meat?”

“Otouto, are you-” Ushio peeks over the edge of the bed, reaching out to Usopp, and he slaps her hand away. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t sting, but...something inside her twinges.

Sanji and Zoro make protesting noises at the sound of the slap, and Usopp’s shouts before the noises turns into words.

“She’s not _your_ neesan!” Ushio bristles at the words and opens her mouth to speak, but Usopp cuts her off again.

“Don’t protect her when she’s hurt you! She almost killed you, Shio! What was Before doesn’t matter!”

“Usopp,” She keeps her words at an easy, soft tone, as she ignores his flinch at the sound of his name, “I’m not protecting her. She...something isn’t right. I wasn’t going to just let her die. Not when I can finally-”

She stops abruptly, not sure how she was going to finish that sentence. Usopp’s face crumbles before it hardens. He stands, and Ushio’s position on the bed has him towering over her in a way that makes her brows furrow.

“Finally what, Ushio? Runaway into the sunset with the woman who got you killed in the first place?” The words are flung at her as if shot from Usopp’s slingshot, and Ushio has tackled Usopp to the ground before she can really register it.

“You are such an ass.” She growls in his face, and Usopp grapples with her, his hand pressed harshly against her face even as she yanks at his nose.

“You’re the ass! Why didn’t you tell me!?” Usopp shouts back nasally, and Ushio scoffs loudly. They squabble for a moment more before their nakama are rushing to pull them apart.

“Because I knew you would act like a dummy.”

“You’re the dummy!”

“You’re being stubborn.”

“Listen to me-”

“No! You listen!” Ushio shouts, fighting off rubbery limbs. The shout startles all of them, and she focuses on Usopp and only Usopp.

“You’re blinded by your own insecurities, and I’m not going to leave! Otouto, I would never leave you, not even for her!” Ushio shouts, eyes darting all around her brother’s face as it crumbles at her words. He sniffs loudly, and Ushio watches his mouth open to speak and rushes to cut him off before he says something else he’d regret.

“Otouto, I just need….I need answers!” Her voice cracks on the words. “We both need answers.”

“Killed you?” Nami’s timid voice breaks the silence after her words, and Ushio and Usopp turn to her in unison.

Ushio is suddenly aware of Sanji holding Usopp back with a gnawed cigarette between his lips, and Nami and Zoro standing between them with a trembling Chopper hiding behind Zoro’s leg.

Luffy makes a curious noise, and Ushio is suddenly aware of Luffy’s chest against her back and his warm breath against the back of her neck.

“You died, Ushio?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yea...you kind of are.” Usopp’s scoff makes her smother quiet laughter to avoid giving her nakama any more grief.

“I love you.” His words are followed by the small press of his nose against her neck.

“I love you too.”

“Giving me carbon dioxide poisoning was a bit much.”

“To be fair, you were a bit...unhinged.” Ushio mumbles out awkwardly.

She’s uncomfortable. Big Sister is sitting in the bed, and she’s not looking at Ushio. Ushio isn’t really looking at her either from her place in the sole chair at her bedside. Instead, she’s looking at down at Big Sister’s hands, watching as her fingers clench and release the blanket covering her legs.

Ushio looks away, shooting her gaze towards the door. Her nakama all dart out of view quickly, and their scrambling noises make Ushio fight back a smile. A soft noise from the bed draws her attention, and she can see out the corner of her eye that Big Sister is watching the door. Ushio faces her fully, hands fisting the skirt dancing around her thighs.

“Do you think there are others like us?” Ushio finally whispers the question that been burning in the back of her mind since she realized this woman is...was Big Sister. Ushio watches the way her fingers grip the blanket, pulling it taunt.

“I don’t know, I never cared. The only thing I ever cared about was finding you. I knew somehow that you were here too.” The words are just as hushed as her question, and Ushio’s fist loosen around the material of her skirt. She sighs, a strange mix of restlessness and disappointment, with her head fuzzy with too much thoughts.

The words are hushed, but Ushio stills hears what is really being asked.

“I will not leave them.” Ushio answers an unspoken question, and the woman flinches before she nods like the answer does not surprise her.

“Because you love them.” The words are not a question, and Ushio flinches. Big Sister’s grip on the blanket somehow gets tighter.

“I-I didn’t think to-”

“Ushio,” She hesitates over a name in a way that Ushio tries to ignore, “don’t feel guilty for something you can’t control. You couldn’t have known-”

“I grieved for you.” Ushio is suddenly rushing to say, “I t-thought...I mean...you were the only person that I _loved.” _

The words leaves her mouth, and a sob that has been building in the back of her throat rips out. Ushio brings her hands up to cover her face even as she continues speaking.

“I _loved _you, even though I didn’t know what that meant until I found Mama and Usopp. I just knew that then...back then you were-”

“Mine.” Big Sister finishes the sentence, a faint frailness clinging to the word. “We were each other’s.”

Ushio nods even though it wasn’t a question, smothering her face into her palms. There’s a shuffling sound, and then cold hands are tugging at her hands. Ushio looks up sharply, and Big Sister is looking back at her. Ushio realizes her eyes are a brilliant dark purple.

They’re beautiful.

“When were you ever this weepy?” The words are said around a soft, sad smile and Ushio tries to laugh, but only cries. Bandaged hands pull her onto the bed, and Ushio clings to the fabric of the shirt underneath her cheek. A soft sigh brushes against the top of her head, and Ushio breathes in the scent of something she thought she had lost as the sound of a door clicking shut fills the air.

It is hours later, and Ushio’s throat is sore from crying and talking. They’re still laying in bed together, tangled under the blanket in a way that reminds Ushio of Usopp.

“What are you going to do now?” Ushio can’t help but ask. The woman visibly jolts in her arms, before she fully relaxes all over again. She burrows further into Ushio and the blanket. Their foreheads knock gently together, and Ushio watches the way Big Sister’s mouth flickers with something like a smile.

“Live...I think. I think I’m going to live. For myself...this time.” The words are whispered, but so full of life that Ushio fills tears flood her eyes all over again. Ushio audibly swallows them down, and the woman’s eyes dance at her with amusement.

“Again?”

“It’s Usopp’s fault. That damn boy has made me so sensitive.”

“Can you give me...a name? A real one.” The words come out slow and hesitant enough to make Ushio turn back around.

She looks frail in that bed, with the blotchy redness on her cheeks from the carbon dioxide poisoning and bandages wrapped around her neck and hands. Her white hair is the brightest thing in the dim light of the room, and Ushio thinks hard before she answers.

“Sashiro.” Ushio sees the way the name registers in the way her shoulders drop, and her hands fall back onto the blanket. She blinks up at Ushio blankly, before a small sound escapes her throat. It’s a laugh. A laugh that starts small in her throat, joyful and ringing, like she didn’t know she could make such a sound.

“Thanks...Ushio.” The smile beaming at her is made all the more beautiful by the tears rolling down her cheeks. Ushio smiles back.

“You’re welcome, Sashiro.”

Ushio sighs as gentle fingers scrub at her scalp, the smell of peaches and plums coming from the conditioner in her hair.

"You have such beautiful hair, Ushio!" Nami chatters in her ear. "I'm so upset it was cut in your fight."

"It's only a few inches." Ushio murmurs, eyes closing as Nami pulls her fingers through her hair. The curls are much more pronounced now, even as water weights it down to curl around her shoulders and rest in the dip between her shoulder blades.

"A few inches?! More like a foot and the half!"

Ushio feels lighter.

She grabs her wide tooth comb from her bucket as Vivi begins to wash Nami's back. Their chatter is pleasant as Ushio combs through her hair.

"The world is a big place, you know. There were giants and dinosaurs and cherry blossoms that bloom in a land of snow! I'm sure there are lots of other unimagined wonders just waiting to be discovered!"

Nami and Ushio share loaded eye-contact, before they turn to Vivi with sly grins. Vivi stutters awkwardly and Ushio laughs, her towel dropping as she stands to make her way towards the bath calling her name.

"You will **NOT** look at my sister, you-you heathens!"

A large crash sounds, Vivi makes a strange, rough noise, and Ushio blinks as she makes direct eye-contact with Luffy. Their heads tilt in unison, and Luffy makes a questioning noise.

"Whoa! You got those little dots all over huh, Ushio?"

Luffy's question lingers int he air for only a moment before a sound like a kettle whistle rings through the air as Usopp screeches at the top of his lungs.

"Y-Y-You dare?!"

"200,000 berries each!"

"Nami?!"

"But if we ever see each other again, will you call me your nakama?" Ushio is very carefully watching Luffy's face when Vivi speaks. His brows only just begin to furrow before his face clears and his mouth begins to form his signature grin.

Ushio turns her back to Vivi, and Usopp knocks their shoulders together as he comes to stand beside her. They trade twin grins before their right arms shoot up into the air in unison.

As tears fall from her face, Vivi feels a warm encompassing wind caress her face like a pair of warm hands.

"Where are you headed? We're not in the clear yet." Zoro calls as she makes her way below deck. Ushio waves a hand over her shoulders, smirking as Zoro's grumbles of "stubborn woman" reach her ears.

With a thought, she slips into the air and follows the Voice until it leads her to a woman reading a book while swaying in Ushio's hammock. She has the absolute pleasure of watching those dead blue eyes grow wide when she appears, leaning over the woman.

"Hey, let's talk for a sec."

"Fine! Bawl your heads off!" Zoro grumbles as a board creeks behind him. "Ushio, stop with the creeping around-"

Zoro turns to scold her even more and pauses. Ushio is grinning at him, eyes crinkling at the corner as she tightens her grip on the collar of Ms. All Sunday's shirt. Ushio shakes her back and forth like this woman isn't nearly an entire foot taller than her, and the woman hangs in her grip like a kitten caught in its mother's mouth.

"I found a cute girl in my hammock!"

Zoro watches the tiniest red flush fill Ms. All Sunday's cheeks with a strange sense of dread.

From her place on the banister, Ushio is happily watching Zoro's arms flex as he performs his reps when a piece of wood falls onto her lap.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello hedwag here! (please get my reference) 
> 
> anyway, you guys give me such love and im such a disaster. i really appreciate your kinds words. you guys are so awesome. so sorry guys for the super late update. my work schedule has changed alot and im still getting used to it! anyway anyway i hope you enjoy the chapter!! let me know what you think. um any recognized dialogue aint me etc etc i'll be doing my rereading thing so please excuse spelling and grammar mistakes no beta here just love


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